Mobile ground control station development for fault tolerant UAV research

The Flight Control System Laboratory at West Virginia University is actively engaged with the development, flight testing, and research of unmanned aerial vehicles. Multiple research topics are approached: aircraft modeling and design, sensor fusion, fault tolerant multi-sensor fusion, control strategy formulation, and testing for fault tolerant flight. This paper presents the new addition of a ground control system which is able to communicate with the onboard flight control system in real time. This system is capable of modifying the flight conditions and the control actions. A research pilot can fly the aircraft through the ground control station taking advantage of a synthetic view with Heads-Up Display containing downlink information from the aircraft showing all parameters of interest. A detailed hardware and software description is provided along with the current testbed capabilities. Testing procedures and results are presented followed by a discussion of future testing and research plans. The Flight Control System Laboratory at West Virginia University is actively engaged with the development, flight testing, and research of unmanned aerial vehicles. Multiple research topics are approached: aircraft modeling and design, sensor fusion, fault tolerant multi-sensor fusion, control strategy formulation, and testing for fault tolerant flight. This paper presents the new addition of a ground control system which is able to communicate with the onboard flight control system in real time. This system is capable of modifying the flight conditions and the control actions. A research pilot can fly the aircraft through the ground control station taking advantage of a synthetic view with Heads-Up Display containing downlink information from the aircraft showing all parameters of interest. A detailed hardware and software description is provided along with the current testbed capabilities. Testing procedures and results are presented followed by a discussion of future testing and research plans.