A non-linear simulation for an autonomous unmanned air vehicle

Unmanned Air Vehicles have become increasingly important on the modern battlefield. The restrictive requirement for runways and special equipment to take off and land was partially solved by the vertical take off and landing Airborne Remotely Operated Device, AROD. Work done at the Naval Postgraduate School has modified the AROD to not only land and launch vertically, but to fly horizontally for the majority of the mission. To realize these capabilities, as well as that of autonomous flight, an accurate computer model was required of both the AROD and the avionics test bed aircraft, Bluebird, in order to design the control and navigation systems. High fidelity, non-linear equations of motion were derived in matrix form that represented any six degree of freedom aircraft model, and were then tailored for use on specific aircraft. Computer modeling of the resulting equations of motion, as well as the sensors used on the aircraft, was done using SIMULINK and MATLAB software. The resulting computer model provides a non-linear system of equations, which are easily linearized at any desired flight condition, as required by the proposed control and navigation system design.