MAV - Hardware In Loop Simulation using LabVIEW

The present work aims to develop a Hardware in Loop Simulator (HILS) which could be handled by engineers without having deep knowledge of programming languages. The HILS set-up consists of miniature aerial vehicle (MAV) and sensors in simulated form, and actuators, On-board computer (OBC) and Ground Control Station (GCS) are actual. The flight mechanics simulator (FMS) contains 12 ordinary differential equations (ODE) solved with RK 4th order method with fixed step size. Analog and digital sensors’ data is simulated using state variables from the FMS. Desktop PC with Embedded Tool Suite (ETS) Real Time Operating System (RTOS) is chosen as real-time target. National Instruments (NI) PCI 6229 is the data acquisition card used for interfacing of analog outputs and analog inputs. NI PCI 8430/4 is RS232 interface for simulated Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) data. 3D motion of the aircraft is observed with FlightGear on a separate PC. The real time performance was observed under various configurations and step sizes. It was observed that the simulation is deterministic for step size 3ms when the FlightGear data is sent over User Datagram Protocol (UDP) in separate loop or not sent. By observing the ground station plots, it was verified that the GPS and IMU data has been received correctly by the OBC.