Hardware-in-the-loop development system for rotary-wing/fixed-wing UAVs

In this paper, according to many kinds of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation systems, especially for the one setting controller as the hardware part, a general HIL development platform was constructed. This platform is consisted of serial input and output communication models, which can be widely used in many kinds of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) HIL simulation systems. Changing the UAV model in Simulink and control algorithm in hardware, a new HIL simulation model will be built. This paper references a HIL simulation platform for Rotary-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (RUAV) developed by Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Science, then properly modified the communication models and successfully applied them on the Fixed-Wing UAV (FUAV) HIL simulation platform. The HIL method is an effective way to construct a more realistic development platform. The system constructed in this paper not only uses the hardware equipment as the control unit, but also represents the FUAV dynamics model in the Matlab/Simulink environment. Besides, this system also brings in the FlightGear interfacing software to help testers obviously observe the flight state changes. This development pattern brings many advantages for developing the flight dynamics models and controllers of different kinds of UAVs. Results from HIL and realistic flight simulation promote the development, improvement, and realization processes of the UAV flight control algorithms and meanwhile assess the adequacy of the flight model.