scholarly journals Real-Time Hardware-in-the-Loop Laboratory Testing for Multisensor Sense and Avoid Systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giancarmine Fasano ◽  
Domenico Accardo ◽  
Lidia Forlenza ◽  
Alfredo Renga ◽  
Giancarlo Rufino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Test System ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Laboratory Simulation ◽  
Hardware In The Loop ◽  
Flight Tests ◽  
Sense And Avoid ◽  
Operating Modes

This paper focuses on a hardware-in-the-loop facility aimed at real-time testing of architectures and algorithms of multisensor sense and avoid systems. It was developed within a research project aimed at flight demonstration of autonomous non-cooperative collision avoidance for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. In this framework, an optionally piloted Very Light Aircraft was used as experimental platform. The flight system is based on multiple-sensor data integration and it includes a Ka-band radar, four electro-optical sensors, and two dedicated processing units. The laboratory test system was developed with the primary aim of prototype validation before multi-sensor tracking and collision avoidance flight tests. System concept, hardware/software components, and operating modes are described in the paper. The facility has been built with a modular approach including both flight hardware and simulated systems and can work on the basis of experimentally tested or synthetically generated scenarios. Indeed, hybrid operating modes are also foreseen which enable performance assessment also in the case of alternative sensing architectures and flight scenarios that are hardly reproducible during flight tests. Real-time multisensor tracking results based on flight data are reported, which demonstrate reliability of the laboratory simulation while also showing the effectiveness of radar/electro-optical fusion in a non-cooperative collision avoidance architecture.

scholarly journals Virtual testbed for monocular visual navigation of small unmanned aircraft systems

2020 ◽  
pp. 154851292095454
Author(s):  
Kyung Kim ◽  
Robert C Leishman ◽  
Scott L Nykl
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Visual Odometry ◽  
Visual Navigation ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft Systems ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Flight Tests ◽  
Aircraft Systems ◽  
Navigation Algorithms ◽  
Virtual Testbed

Monocular visual navigation methods have seen significant advances in the last decade, recently producing several real-time solutions for autonomously navigating small unmanned aircraft systems without relying on the Global Positioning System (GPS). This is critical for military operations that may involve environments where GPS signals are degraded or denied. However, testing and comparing visual navigation algorithms remains a challenge since visual data is expensive to gather. Conducting flight tests in a virtual environment is an attractive solution prior to committing to outdoor testing. This work presents a virtual testbed for conducting simulated flight tests over real-world terrain and analyzing the real-time performance of visual navigation algorithms at 31 Hz. This tool was created to ultimately find a visual odometry algorithm appropriate for further GPS-denied navigation research on fixed-wing aircraft, even though all of the algorithms were designed for other modalities. This testbed was used to evaluate three current state-of-the-art, open-source monocular visual odometry algorithms on a fixed-wing platform: Direct Sparse Odometry, Semi-Direct Visual Odometry, and ORB-SLAM2 (with loop closures disabled).

scholarly journals Path Planning and Real-Time Collision Avoidance Based on the Essential Visibility Graph

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (16) ◽  
pp. 5613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciano Blasi ◽  
Egidio D’Amato ◽  
Massimiliano Mattei ◽  
Immacolata Notaro
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Piecewise Linear ◽  
Minimum Cost ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Visibility Graph ◽  
Flight Mechanics ◽  
Civil Aviation ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Path Search

This paper deals with a novel procedure to generate optimum flight paths for multiple unmanned aircraft in the presence of obstacles and/or no-fly zones. A real-time collision avoidance algorithm solving the optimization problem as a minimum cost piecewise linear path search within the so-called Essential Visibility Graph (EVG) is first developed. Then, a re-planning procedure updating the EVG over a selected prediction time interval is proposed, accounting for the presence of multiple flying vehicles or movable obstacles. The use of Dubins curves allows obtaining smooth paths, compliant with flight mechanics constraints. In view of possible future applications in hybrid scenarios where both manned and unmanned aircraft share the airspace, visual flight rules compliant with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex II Right of Way were implemented. An extensive campaign of numerical simulations was carried out to test the effectiveness of the proposed technique by setting different operational scenarios of increasing complexity. Results show that the algorithm is always able to identify trajectories compliant with ICAO rules for avoiding collisions and assuring a minimum safety distance as well. Furthermore, the low computational burden suggests that the proposed procedure can be considered a promising approach for real-time applications.

Power Test System Development and Dynamic Performance State Estimation Based on Hub Motor Vehicle

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
Jing Gan ◽  
Xiaobin Fan ◽  
Zeng Song ◽  
Mingyue Zhang ◽  
Bin Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Dynamic Performance ◽  
Test System ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Maximum Speed ◽  
Performance Parameters ◽  
Power Performance ◽  
Power Test ◽  
The Real

Background: The power performance of an electric vehicle is the basic parameter. Traditional test equipment, such as the expensive chassis dynamometer, not only increases the cost of testing but also makes it impossible to measure all the performance parameters of an electric vehicle. Objective: A set of convenient, efficient and sensitive power measurement system for electric vehicles is developed to obtain the real-time power changes of hub-motor vehicles under various operating conditions, and the dynamic performance parameters of hub-motor vehicles are obtained through the system. Methods: Firstly, a set of on-board power test system is developed by using virtual instrument (Lab- VIEW). This test system can obtain the power changes of hub-motor vehicles under various operating conditions in real-time and save data in real-time. Then, the driving resistance of hub-motor vehicles is analyzed, and the power performance of hub-motor vehicles is studied in depth. The power testing system is proposed to test the input power of both ends of the driving motor, and the chassis dynamometer is combined to test so that the output efficiency of the driving motor can be easily obtained without disassembly. Finally, this method is used to carry out the road test and obtain the vehicle dynamic performance parameters. Results: The real-time current, voltage and power, maximum power, acceleration time and maximum speed of the vehicle can be obtained accurately by using the power test system in the real road experiment. Conclusion: The maximum power required by the two motors reaches about 9KW, and it takes about 20 seconds to reach the maximum speed. The total power required to maintain the maximum speed is about 7.8kw, and the maximum speed is 62km/h. In this article, various patents have been discussed.

scholarly journals Power Hardware-in-the-Loop-Based Performance Analysis of Different Converter Controllers for Fast Active Power Regulation in Low-Inertia Power Systems

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 3274
Author(s):  
Jose Rueda Torres ◽  
Zameer Ahmad ◽  
Nidarshan Veera Kumar ◽  
Elyas Rakhshani ◽  
Ebrahim Adabi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
Power Systems ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
Active Power ◽  
Power Electronic ◽  
Hardware In The Loop ◽  
Digital Controllers ◽  
Power Regulation ◽  
The Impact

Future electrical power systems will be dominated by power electronic converters, which are deployed for the integration of renewable power plants, responsive demand, and different types of storage systems. The stability of such systems will strongly depend on the control strategies attached to the converters. In this context, laboratory-scale setups are becoming the key tools for prototyping and evaluating the performance and robustness of different converter technologies and control strategies. The performance evaluation of control strategies for dynamic frequency support using fast active power regulation (FAPR) requires the urgent development of a suitable power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) setup. In this paper, the most prominent emerging types of FAPR are selected and studied: droop-based FAPR, droop derivative-based FAPR, and virtual synchronous power (VSP)-based FAPR. A novel setup for PHIL-based performance evaluation of these strategies is proposed. The setup combines the advanced modeling and simulation functions of a real-time digital simulation platform (RTDS), an external programmable unit to implement the studied FAPR control strategies as digital controllers, and actual hardware. The hardware setup consists of a grid emulator to recreate the dynamic response as seen from the interface bus of the grid side converter of a power electronic-interfaced device (e.g., type-IV wind turbines), and a mockup voltage source converter (VSC, i.e., a device under test (DUT)). The DUT is virtually interfaced to one high-voltage bus of the electromagnetic transient (EMT) representation of a variant of the IEEE 9 bus test system, which has been modified to consider an operating condition with 52% of the total supply provided by wind power generation. The selected and programmed FAPR strategies are applied to the DUT, with the ultimate goal of ascertaining its feasibility and effectiveness with respect to the pure software-based EMT representation performed in real time. Particularly, the time-varying response of the active power injection by each FAPR control strategy and the impact on the instantaneous frequency excursions occurring in the frequency containment periods are analyzed. The performed tests show the degree of improvements on both the rate-of-change-of-frequency (RoCoF) and the maximum frequency excursion (e.g., nadir).

scholarly journals Incorporation of Potential Fields and Motion Primitives for the Collision Avoidance of Unmanned Aircraft

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3103
Author(s):  
Kyuman Lee ◽  
Daegyun Choi ◽  
Donghoon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Search Algorithm ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Artificial Potential Field ◽  
Tree Search ◽  
Local Minima ◽  
Collision Risk ◽  
Motion Primitives ◽  
Multiple Uavs ◽  
Tree Search Algorithm

Collision avoidance (CA) using the artificial potential field (APF) usually faces several known issues such as local minima and dynamically infeasible problems, so unmanned aerial vehicles’ (UAVs) paths planned based on the APF are safe only in a certain environment. This research proposes a CA approach that combines the APF and motion primitives (MPs) to tackle the known problems associated with the APF. Since MPs solve for a locally optimal trajectory with respect to allocated time, the trajectory obtained by the MPs is verified as dynamically feasible. When a collision checker based on the k-d tree search algorithm detects collision risk on extracted sample points from the planned trajectory, generating re-planned path candidates to avoid obstacles is performed. After rejecting unsafe route candidates, one applies the APF to select the best route among the remaining safe-path candidates. To validate the proposed approach, we simulated two meaningful scenario cases—the presence of static obstacles situation with local minima and dynamic environments with multiple UAVs present. The simulation results show that the proposed approach provides smooth, efficient, and dynamically feasible pathing compared to the APF.

Design and development of a backstepping controller autopilot for fixed-wing UAVs

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
D. Sartori ◽  
F. Quagliotti ◽  
M.J. Rutherford ◽  
K.P. Valavanis
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Control Law ◽  
Parametric Uncertainties ◽  
Hardware In The Loop ◽  
Aircraft Control ◽  
Backstepping Approach ◽  
Small Uav ◽  
Backstepping Controller ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Performance Results

Abstract Backstepping represents a promising control law for fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Its non-linearity and its adaptation capabilities guarantee adequate control performance over the whole flight envelope, even when the aircraft model is affected by parametric uncertainties. In the literature, several works apply backstepping controllers to various aspects of fixed-wing UAV flight. Unfortunately, many of them have not been implemented in a real-time controller, and only few attempt simultaneous longitudinal and lateral–directional aircraft control. In this paper, an existing backstepping approach able to control longitudinal and lateral–directional motions is adapted for the definition of a control strategy suitable for small UAV autopilots. Rapidly changing inner-loop variables are controlled with non-adaptive backstepping, while slower outer loop navigation variables are Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) controlled. The controller is evaluated through numerical simulations for two very diverse fixed-wing aircraft performing complex manoeuvres. The controller behaviour with model parametric uncertainties or in presence of noise is also tested. The performance results of a real-time implementation on a microcontroller are evaluated through hardware-in-the-loop simulation.

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