# MAT-Fly: An Educational Platform for Simulating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Aimed to Detect and Track Moving Objects

## TL;DR

MAT-Fly is an open-source, modular simulation platform built in Matlab for educational purposes, enabling students to simulate UAV behavior in tracking moving objects using virtual reality and computer vision tools.

## Contribution

It introduces a user-friendly, customizable simulation environment for UAV visual detection and tracking, integrating Matlab, VR, and CVS toolboxes for educational use.

## Key findings

- Validated through simple testbeds demonstrating tracking capabilities
- Platform is modular and easily customizable
- Open-source release facilitates educational adoption

## Abstract

The main motivation of this work is to propose a simulation approach for a specific task within the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) field, i.e., the visual detection and tracking of arbitrary moving objects. In particular, it is described MAT-Fly, a numerical simulation platform for multi-rotor aircraft characterized by the ease of use and control development. The platform is based on Matlab and the MathWorks Virtual Reality (VR) and Computer Vision System (CVS) toolboxes that work together to simulate the behavior of a quad-rotor while tracking a car that moves along a nontrivial path. The VR toolbox has been chosen due to the familiarity that students have with Matlab and because it does not require a notable effort by the user for the learning and development phase thanks to its simple structure. The overall architecture is quite modular so that each block can be easily replaced with others simplifying the code reuse and the platform customization. Some simple testbeds are presented to show the validity of the approach and how the platform works. The simulator is released as open-source, making it possible to go through any part of the system, and available for educational purposes.