Real time sensor acquisition platform for experimental UAV research

In this paper, the design and development of an experimental data acquisition platform is presented. This platform is aimed at testing the performance of a set of sensors and their integration in order to assess its potential use in advanced UAV applications. The main function of such a platform is to collect the inflight raw data with the appropriate Quality of Service necessary to feed filtering algorithms which accurately define the state vector of the UAV required by advanced Flight Control Systems. Aiming at such purpose, a set of high performance low-cost sensors have been integrated in the platform, providing information on UAV's acceleration, angular rates, geometric and pressure altitudes, airspeed, angle of attack and sideslip, GPS position, altitude groundspeed and raw data, earth's magnetic field vector, and outside air temperature. Special focus has been put to provide an accurate and synchronized timestamp to all measurements. Furthermore, data can be monitored in real-time by a custom Labview application, or stored in a flash memory for later offline post-processing. The data acquisition platform developed is flexible and scalable, providing capability to implement complex data filtering algorithms and even basic flight control systems.