Designing a system automation for a novel UAV demonstrator

The SAGITTA Research Demonstrator is a flying-wing UAV testbed. Its digital flight control system, which is being developed by the Institute of Flight System Dynamics of the Technical University Munich, consists of cascaded control loops. In a UAV operation scenario, different control loops need to be engaged at different times or connected in different ways to fulfill a given mission. This has to be done with respect to commands from the flight operator or even automatically based on sensor information or data link availability. The task is handled by a system automation module which is part of the flight control system software. Its structure and implementation are introduced and described in this paper.