A hybrid particle/grid wind model for realtime small UAV flight simulation

This paper presents the integration of a fast fluid solver based on the vortex particle method with an open source robot simulation environment for the purpose of simulating wind in urban areas. It is desired for the wind simulation to run at realtime speeds so that high-level landing behaviors can be developed for a small rotary-wing UAV. Due to the realtime constraint, some inaccuracies in the simulation are tolerated. It is found that the present method captures some key aspects of fluid flow that are important to flying small aircraft near environmental obstacles, but a simplified treatment of boundary conditions leads to incomplete development of vortices at the fluid-solid boundary.