Design of Virtual-Real Cooperative Flight Testbed for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper establishes a virtual-real cooperative flight testbed to conduct outdoor flight experiments of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) economically and efficiently. The framework of the virtual-real testbed is designed, and the interfaces among physical UAVs, virtual UAVs, onboard terminals, and ground control stations are defined. Physical UAVs utilize the autopilot to track the flight trajectory. By using the dynamics model and trajectory tracking controller, virtual UAVs conduct simulation flight. Temporal-spatial consistency among virtual and physical UAVs is ensured via time delay operation and coordinate system conversion. The flight experiment results show that the maximum deviation of the flight time among virtual and physical UAVs is 1.9 s and the trajectory tracking error is less than 4 m, which validate the effectiveness of the testbed.