Preliminary UAV autopilot integration and in-flight testing

摘要

The paper presents integration process of commercial autopilot. The autopilot wasintegrated with a fixed wing airframe. The main aim of this work was an experimental study of theautopilot integrated with a micro aircraft. A few manual and autonomous mode flights wereperformed. During the field trials the autopilot PID parameters were tuned and, as a result, theprocess of PID gains selection was described. Selected PID gains were presented. Certain telemetryparameters such as longitudinal and lateral position of aircraft, orientation angles, and angularvelocities were logged during flight and analyzed. Maximum and minimum airspeeds at a desiredaltitude were measured and presented. Moreover, Received Signal Strange Indicator betweenground station and UAV equipped with special antenna was measured and logged for radiocommunication quality and range checking. Presented analysis of the autopilot's work and obtainedresults were used to assess the applicability of this hardware to next formation flight operations.