Hardware-virtual environment integration

Testing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) while ensuring safety and still maintaining efficiency seems to be an important issue for researchers due to the unstable nature of the flying platforms. Computer simulations are a popular choice, but they are unable to provide accurate real-time hardware data. Thus, researchers have to rely on the software equivalents of approximate hardware models. This paper introduces the concept of real rotary-winged UAV hardware testbed integration with a Virtual Environment (VE), where navigation within the virtually created environment is possible. During navigation, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) data is sent wirelessly to the VE in real-time. The orientation data from the IMU is processed by a microcontroller to calculate the Pitch, Roll and Yaw angles. The data is transmitted wirelessly using a pair of RF modules to the virtual environment created using the Unity engine, running on a computer. The data can then be used to navigate a virtual UAV inside the virtual environment. The testbed will help researchers to emulate flying in different geographical scenarios and test algorithms to their limits without the risk of damaging UAV.