无人机编队飞行快速试验系统设计

Development of an Experiment System for UAV Formation Flight

为缩小针对无人机编队控制问题的理论研究与实际应用之间的脱节,设计了一套无人机编队飞行快速试验系统,包括基于X-Plane的硬件在回路(HIL)仿真系统和飞行试验系统.HIL仿真系统和飞行试验系统中使用相同的自驾仪和地面控制站,通过HIL仿真可以提前发现并修正在仿真中暴露的问题,从而减少飞行试验所需的时间和成本,缩短方法从理论到应用的时间.试验系统中解决了无人机之间及无人机与地面站之间的通信问题,使得无人机之间可以直接通信,不用通过地面站转发,且单个地面站可以监视和管理多架无人机.采用网络化的软、硬件设计,使得试验系统能够用于验证各种通信拓扑的编队控制算法.为验证上述系统的有效性,设计长机-僚机编队控制方法对试验系统进行验证.结果表明,通过HIL仿真验证的自驾仪可以直接移植到飞行试验系统中,只需微调一些控制参数即可快速实现无人机编队飞行.

To narrow the gap between the theory and practice in UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) formation control, a formation flight experiment system is developed, which includes an X-Plane based hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation subsystem and a flight experiment subsystem. In the two subsystems, the same autopilot and ground control station are used. By the HIL simulation, defects and bugs emerging in the simulation can be found and modified before field experiment. Therefore, the time and cost required by flight experiments are reduced, and the time from theory to application can be shortened. Besides, communications between the vehicles and between the vehicle and the ground station are well tackled. The vehicles can share information via inter-vehicle communication without intervention of ground stations. Moreover, multiple UAVs can be monitored and managed by one ground control station. By network-based software and hardware designs, the experiment subsystem can be used to validate formation control algorithms based on various communication topologies. A leader-follower formation approach is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the entire experiment system. The results show that the autopilot validated by the HIL simulation can be applied to the flight experiment subsystem directly. The only work required by the actual formation flight is to perform a little fine adjustment on some control parameters. © 2017, Science Press. All right reserved.