Development of a flight test system for unmanned air vehicles

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of Unman ned Air Vehicles (UAVs) by the armed forces, both in the US and abroad. Mor e recently, many researchers in the academic community have realized the us efulness of UAVs both as teaching and research tools. To develop UAVs and t heir flight control systems, a number of engineering problems must be addre ssed covering a wide range of issues that include weight and energy restric tions, portability, risk factors, electronic interferences, vibrations and manpower. Furthermore, the testing of new algorithms, sensor packages, and vehicles is a truly multidisciplinary effort that borrows from many branche s of the engineering sciences that include aeronautic, electrical, and comp uter engineering. The process is costly and time consuming, and has the pot ential for catastrophic failure. When successfully completed, however, it p rovides developmental information, insight, and field data that cannot be o btained from other sources-thus the importance to develop systems to enable rapid flight testing of new theoretical/practical concepts. Motivated by these considerations, and as a contribution towards the develo pment of a versatile set-up for advanced UAV system design and testing, the Naval Postgraduate School has recently completed development of a rapid fl ight test prototyping system (RFTPS) for a prototype UAV named Frog. This p aper describes the complete RFTPS system that uses the Frog UAV and a porta ble ground station, and explains how it is being used as a rapid proof-of-c oncept tool for testing new guidance, navigation, and control algorithms fo r air vehicles. The paper starts with a general discussion of thr Rapid Fli ght Test Prototyping System (RFTPS) including the main motivation behind it s development as well as the system capabilities, cost and safety requireme nts, and hardware description. The second part focuses on the modeling of t he Frog UAV and describes briefly a novel integrated guidance and control s ystem for precise trajectory tracking that was introduced in [1]. Finally, it is shown how the RFTPS was used to develop and flight test the integrate d guidance and control system. The full capabilities of the RFTPS are demon strated when the new algorithm is taken from theoretical development to fli ght test on the UAV Fmg operated by thr UAV Lab at the Naval Postgraduate S chool.