Design of a quadrotor control software experimental validation platform based on real-time hardware-in-the-loop simulation

High quality simulation environment can accelerate the development of the control software. Also, it is a good tool for the beginner to study how the control software works. The goal of this paper is aiming at designing a real time HIL experimental platform for quadrotor autopilot software design, validation and optimization. The platform is mainly composed of four blocks: A quadrotor dynamics model, a flight control system, a communication agent and hardware devices for control input and output. The flight dynamics model of a quadrotor build in this paper is to simulate the physics involved with its movement. It receives input signals from the autopilot controller, and returns the quadrotor's real time pose, position, velocities, and etc. resulting from the input signals to the autopilot controller. A communication agent implements bidirectional communication between the flight dynamics model and the autopilot controller. Hardware devices for input and output is used to change the flight mode, indicate the flight state and test the control law. This paper focuses primarily on developing an experiment platform that works for control software validation. It allows for the safe testing of experimental code and settings, especially for aggressive and agile flight test.