Flight Data Acquisition Platform Development, Integration, and Operation on Small- to Medium-Sized Unmanned Aircraft

摘要

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly increasing in popularity for civilian, military, and research applications, and as part of this uptrend, significant effort has been undertaken to integrate an increasing amount of sensing into these vehicles. This sensing, or in other words, acquisition of sensor data, is part of the core functionality of UAVs — without the ability to sense, an unmanned aircraft is unable to function. By intelligently integrating sensors into a vehicle and properly interfacing with them, one is able to derive streams of data from these sensors, which allow the aircraft to fly and the desired mission to occur. In just the past several years, along with the uptrend in UAV use, there has been an increase in the research to evaluate and improve aircraft performance and flight characteristics. All of these efforts depend on the ability to acquire and utilize high fidelity data from a large range of sensors and devices. This paper will first provide an overview for the development of a data acquisition system. It will then focus on the design aspects involved including system architecture, sensing interfaces, common sensors, and user interface. Next, the paper will present a study of data acquisition systems and flight control systems that have been used in UAV research, with their specifications. Finally, avionics integration examples will be provided to demonstrate application in an unmanned aircraft.