A Simulation Test Bed for Coordination of Unmanned Rotorcraft and Ground Vehicles

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a simulation test bed for a command, control, computer, communication, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C 4 ISR) system. The test bed features coordination of a rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle (RUAV) and multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) by integrating a high-fidelity rotorcraft model with actual ground-based robots that emulate UGVs. The RUAV component of the test bed is realized on a networked computer simulation, whereas networked robotics hardware is employed for the UGV representation. The RUAV dynamics run a high-fidelity nonlinear simulation model of a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter. To emulate the dynamics of the UGVs, several networked Segway robots are employed. The proposed C 4 ISR system undertakes the task of mission management from the top level discrete-event supervision (DES) to the bottom level continuous-time regulation. Nomenclature h Rotorcraft altitude above ground, ft K D Derivative control factor K I Integral control factor K P Proportional control factor r b Rotorcraft yaw rate, rad/s V Rotorcraft total airspeed, kt V D Rotorcraft vertical speed, ft/s γ Simulated sensor visibility angle, rad θ Angle between center of sensor and vertical axis, rad φ Rotorcraft roll angle, rad θ Rotorcraft pitch angle, rad ψ Rotorcraft heading angle, rad v Robot linear velocity, m/s ω Robot angular velocity, rad/s Subscript cmd Commanded value err Error r Rotorcraft t Target

Integrated Simulation Environment for Unmanned Autonomous Systems—Towards a Conceptual Framework

“…Typically, UAS modeling and simulation efforts have been directed towards supporting specific applications and were focused primarily on vehicle dynamics and control [10][11][12][13][14][15]. Commercially available flight simulation packages can be customized and used for limited-scope UAS analysis [16].…”