Specification, design and implementation of a flight control unit for an unmanned aerial vehicle

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The specification, design and implementation of an avionics system includinga flight control unit for an unmanned aerial vehicle that is suitable for researchpurposes is presented. The project aims to address a number of limitations ofprevious systems that were developed at the Electronic Systems Laboratoryof Stellenbosch University.An architecture is developed that is based on documented research andopen industry standards. The architecture enables distributed, real-time andembedded flight control applications to be developed. The platform is extendiblewith minimal effort. Provision is made to support sensor and actuatorhardware that has been developed in the past.The results of a flight controller that was previously developed at the ElectronicSystems Laboratory and was ported to the new architecture are provided.The newly ported flight controller is proven to work correctly usinghardware-in-the-loop simulations. Comparative tests indicate that the performanceis on-par with existing Electronic Systems Laboratory systems.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University