Research On Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation Of An UAV Flight Control System

Flight Control System is a important part of modern Aircraft, is a kind of integrated system withthe capability of autonomous navigation, integrated automatic flight control and flight missionplanning.It plays a vital role in ensuring the stability of autonomous flight of UAV. This requires thedesigner to develop and test the flight control system to ensure that the technical condition can meetall kinds of missions. Before the flight control computer is used in the aircraft, it is necessary todesign real-time simulation platform for testing the flight control system to shorten the developmentcycle and reduce costs.To begin with, this paper develops a dynamic model of ducted rotor coaxial UAV. This paperbuilds a simulation model by the use of Matlab/Simulink, gets the small perturbation linear modeunder relevant flight state, then analyses the operating characteristics and stability of the UAV,ultimately, provide the necessary controlled object for the flight control system.Secondly, this paper carries out the overall design of simulation platform, completes the flightcontrol system hardware and software design, analyses the function of flight control computer andcommunications equipment device. Implementing the task of STM32processor and PC104processor,PC104processor is mainly responsible for the control law solver, STM32processor achieves datacommunication between various hardware devices by serial communication.Later, using Simulink/RTW tool to design the flight control law and generate code, combinedwith VxWorks/Tornado software, compile and download real-time flight control code to the targetmachine, which is the flight control computer system. The external mode helps the host to monitor theflight control computer and adjust parameter. Using C#to complete the plant model and other tasksubjects, establishing simulation console platform to achieve the function of plant model dynamicssolver, flight course planning, simulation process control, real-time data display and serial datainteraction.Finally, building HIL simulation platform consist of the flight control system hardware andsimulation console platform,. Given the different flight course to verify the flight control system, thesimulation test results show that the flight control system is reliable and effective.