Summary
Research in flight mechanics and control requires good mathematical models for the aircraft under study. In particular, for fixed wing aircraft is well documented in the literature the mathematical model based on the equations of motion that are stated assuming that the aircraft is a rigid body, but the heart of these equations that determine the actual dynamic behavior of the aircraft is the knowledge of a good model for propulsive and aerodynamic forces and moments. There are approximate analytical methods to model propulsive and aerodynamic forces and moments but all those methods require validation and it is difficult to model all of the nonlinear behavior involved. It was recognized that to leverage the research if flight mechanics and control it is fundamental to get good mathematical models based on actual flight data. For that purpose many UAV test beds have been implemented. Some of them are reported in the literature, see for instance. In this work the hardware selection and integration, and the software development for a test bed based on a small fixed wing UAV is presented.
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Related Publication
L. B. Gutiérrez, “Instrumentation of a small fixed wing UAV for research in flight mechanics and control.” Poster presentation in the 2019 IEEE 4th Colombian Conference on Automatic Control (CCAC) (Medellı́n, Colombia), October 15-18, 2019. pdf