Development of a Drone Simulator for Autonomous Flight Verification

Abstract

This paper describes a drone simulator that we have developed for autonomous flight verification. Currently, interest in drones is increasing and their applications are expanding, but accidents are also occurring. In order to prevent accidents, it is necessary to thoroughly verify the control law, but there are risks such as crashing when using a real aircraft. Therefore, it is possible to reduce the risk by using a simulator in the testing phase of the control law. In this study, we constructed a simulator using MATLAB/Simulink and Simscape Multibody, and conducted controller adjustment experiment for a single drone and verification of autonomous control laws for multiple drones. From the first experiment, it was found that the simulator could not reproduce the behavior after adjustment. From the second experiment, we verified the control law and clarified its problems.