UAV flight control system modeling and simulation based on flightGear

In order to develop a new aircraft model for FlightGear, this paper has described the establishing process of the 3D aircraft model and the configuration files which are mainly described in XML format. Aiming at finding an effective way to design and test the control law for the UAV, a real-time visual flight simulation system is constructed based on FlightGear. In this simulation system, the FlightGear visual module is driven to simulate the real-time 3D UAV model which contains flight states, weather condition and geographic environment. And the fight simulation data is sent to the FlightGear simulator through autopilot I/O port by UDP. This simulation system plays an important role in designing and testing the control law, and has made good effect on validating the control law of the UAV. The simulation results have shown that this visual flight simulation system is economic, valid, feasible, and has great progress on enhancing the efficiency of the project.