Cardiff University - UAV

Launch Group The development of a bench top UAV design environment and using it to design,
build and test a UAV
UAV Test Bench
Introduction
The UAV Test Bench was built using LabVIEW combined with FlightGear: a freely available flight simulator capable of modelling small scale aircraft. The Test Bench was used to develop and test the autopilot software used within the UAV Controller. The autopilot was developed for an RC model aircraft within the flight simulator and then deployed to the real UAV without change.

Self Levelling UAV

Introduction
The UAV builds upon a normal model aircraft with the addition of a UAV Controller and orientation sensor. The UAV controller is an embedded controller that runs the software routines developed to sustain autonomous flight and the orientation sensor provides feedback to such routines.

PID Controller Tuning

The PID controllers were tuned by stimulating an aircraft and observing the response. The response of the system was then automatically characterised by a number of parameters that are used to approximate a model of the system. Based on this model, a number of methods are used to calculate the PID parameters needed: Ziegler-Nichols Chien, Hrones, and Reswick Cohen-Coon Internal Model Control

National Instruments sbRIO UAV Controller

The UAV Controller is the intelligent control system on-board the UAV. It interfaces with the on-board sensor to monitor the orientation of the aircraft and it controls the servos to manoeuvre the aircraft.

Xsens MTi-G Orientation Sensor

The MTi-G contains gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers in 3D and its on-board sensor fusion algorithm is able to provide drift-free 3D orientation data accurate to within 0.5 degrees.

LabVIEW Test Bench & Autopilot

LabVIEW was used to develop the Test Bench and the UAV. This meant that the autopilot could be developed inside the Test Bench and then installed to the UAV Controller without change.

Results
A model aircraft was used to tune the PID controller in the Test Bench. The Ziegler-Nichols method proved best and gave initial PID parameters that were fine tuned manually. The autopilot was finalised inside the Test Bench before being tested outdoors.

Radio Communication
The wireless link allowed on-board systems to be monitored while in flight.

Results
A number of test flights were conducted at a local model flying club. The UAV was able to maintain level flight as indented in windy conditions. The roll and pitch controllers worked well and responded similar to what was observed in the Test Bench proving the legitimacy of the Test Bench.

Flight Data Logger

Flight data was logged to SD card to firstly to find the cause of any incidents that may occur and secondly to monitor the response of the autopilot.

BEng Computer Systems Engineering Individual Project by Lewis Gear