Integrating Heterogeneous Tools for Physical Simulation of multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper presents a multi-layer software architecture to simulate, in a accurate and realistic way, a set of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating in a specific mission. A set of tools are employed, each one to simulate a specific part of the overall UAV hardware and software structure: a 3D visualization engine, a physical simulator, the flight stack and a network simulator to handle interactions among UAVs. A software architecture able to orchestrate and coordinate such tools is proposed, based on multiple layers of processes divided into two categories. The described approach is based on a protocol system for exchanging messages to synchronize the various simulation tools. The simulation of the unmanned aerial vehicles can therefore be performed on a single machine or distributed on several machines in order to create a distributed simulation and spread the workload. In this way, it is possible to simulate the behavior of the UAVs and also to reason about the problems due to network communications.

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