A software tool for mission design and autopilot integration: an application to micro aerial vehicles
Elisa Capello, Giorgio Guglieri, Fulvia B. Quagliotti · PORTO Publications Open Repository TOrino (Politecnico di Torino) · 2008
Civil and military applications based on unmanned aerial vehicles have been widely investigated and developed by aerospace industries and universities, under the supervision of technical committees acting for aeronautical certification authorities. Most recently, the automatic flight of MAVs (Micro Aerial Vehicles) has been studied with success for territorial surveillance and reconnaissance. This paper describes the integration of a commercial autopilot on the MicroHawk platforms, designed and performed at Politecnico di Torino. In order to simplify the use of these platforms by the end-user, a software interface has been designed to calculate automatically the flight plan in both relative and absolute coordinates, depending on the trajectory and the center origin for homing. The desired mission profile is simulated providing full state tracking of vehicle dynamics and flight performances. Open source software environments are used as an advantage for the development of general purpose re-configurable applications. The aim of this project was to modify the basic characteristics of the MicroPilot MP2128g autopilot. The MicroPilot standard guidance navigation and control unit is based on gain-scheduled PID controllers, because of their simplicity, reliability, and ease of implementation. Plant efficiency and consistent product quality depend on proper loop performance. The autopilot simulation integrated with vehicle's dynamics can be used to rapidly tune the control parameters based on user-specified response characteristics. Test results demonstrate that the system has good generalization capability and can be used to tune the autopilot for any generic aircraft configuration minimizing the platform set-up time. Another application of the tool is rapid mission planning with user-friendly interaction ensuring the desired trajectory design and collision avoidance. The results of this work will be detailed in the full paper.