(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-01)
Johnson, Eric N.; Schrage, Daniel P.
The use of flight simulation tools to reduce the schedule, risk, and required amount of
flight testing for complex aerospace systems is a well-recognized benefit of these approaches.
However, some special challenges arise when one attempts to obtain these benefits for the
development and operation of a research unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system. Research
UAV systems are characterized by the need for continual checkout of experimental software
and hardware. Also, flight testing can be further leveraged by complementing experimental
results with flight-test validated simulation results for the same vehicle system. In this
paper, flight simulation architectures for system design, integration, and operation of an
experimental helicopter-based UAV are described. The chosen helicopter-based UAV
platform (a Yamaha R-Max) is well instrumented: differential GPS, an inertial
measurement unit, sonar altimetry, and a three-axis magnetometer. One or two general-purpose
flight processors can be utilized. Research flight test results obtained to date,
including those completed in conjunction with the DARPA Software Enabled Control
program, are summarized.