Towards a Low-Cost Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator for Free Flight Simulation of UAVs

This paper presents some novel ideas on building a low cost hardware-in-the-loop simulator for free flight simulation of unmanned air vehicles. We postulate that to achieve maximum transparency of hardware-in-the-loop simulation it is necessary to match the boundary conditions around the aircraft such that in terms of interaction with the environment the aircraft does not feel a difference between being flown in the lab and being in free flight. We introduce a pefromance index based on some recent research and we present a possible hardware and software architecture for a 2-DOF free flight simulator that is currently under development.