Multifixed-Wing-UAV Software-in-the-Loop Simulation Platform for System Design

This article presents a software-in-the-loop simulation environment focused on multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs) systems for test and validation of cooperative control algorithms. The proposed architecture has several layers for low-level and high-level algorithms and is implemented using the robot operating system, Gazebo, and MATLAB/Simulink. This framework provides resources for researchers to develop, evaluate, and validate cooperative algorithms for multiaircraft systems using realistic models in real-world modeled environments that are easily reconfigurable. The system is open source and allows designers to add or modify configurations and algorithms to focus on their system's needs. Experiments and comparisons have been conducted to verify the performance of the proposed architecture and to describe how it can be used for system design.