Development of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Research Platform : Modeling, Simulating, and Flight Testing

The Advanced Navigation Technology (ANT) Center at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) conducts extensive research in advanced guidance, navigation, and control to exploit the full potential of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The research in this thesis describes a UAV research platform developed to support the ANT Center's goals. This platform is now the bedrock for UAV simulation and local flight test at AFIT. The research has three major components. The first component includes development of a physical, inertial, and aerodynamic model representing an existing aircraft. A systematic analysis of the airframe leads to a complete geometric, inertial, and aerodynamic representation. The airframe analysis includes the use of USAF Digital Datcom, an aerodynamic modeling software tool. Second is the development and implementation of a non-linear, six degree of freedom simulation, employing the developed model. Constructed in Matlab/SIMULINK, the simulation enables control design and pre-flight analysis throughout the entire flight envelope. Detailed post-flight analysis is also performed in Matlab/SIMULINK. Additionally, a Hardware in the Loop benchmark simulation is constructed for initial flight test planning as well as test team training.