Concept and Construction of Cost Effective UAV Simulator Using Hardware in the Loop and Simulation-Based Training

Abstract

Design concept and construction of UAV Simulator is presented in this paper. The simulator is designed as a training tool for external pilot, internal pilot, payload operator, and maintenance crews. The system architecture composes of hardware in the loop (HIL) subsystem and simulation subsystem. The actual UAV system is used as HIL, and virtual environment is created to provide necessary conditions for the systems. This configuration helps to reduce the cost associated with building replicas of UAVs and enable the trainees to train under the real equipment. A modular design will also make the system possible to be used as an engineering simulation.