Hardware-in-the-loop simulation of a UAV autonomous landing algorithm implemented in SoC FPGA

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a hardware-in-the-loop simulation system for UAV autonomous landing algorithms on SoC FPGA platforms, enabling real-time processing and testing with low cost and high flexibility.

Contribution

It introduces a novel HiL simulation setup combining AirSim and FPGA hardware for UAV control algorithm testing.

Findings

System operates correctly with no delays affecting control stability

Real-time processing of 1280x720 video at 60 fps achieved

Low-cost, simple implementation suitable for testing various algorithms

Abstract

This paper presents a system for hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) simulation of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control algorithms implemented on a heterogeneous SoC FPGA computing platforms. The AirSim simulator running on a PC and an Arty Z7 development board with a Zynq SoC chip from AMD Xilinx were used. Communication was carried out via a serial USB link. An application for autonomous landing on a specially marked landing strip was selected as a case study. A landing site detection algorithm was implemented on the Zynq SoC platform. This allowed processing a 1280 x 720 @ 60 fps video stream in real time. Performed tests showed that the system works correctly and there are no delays that could negatively affect the stability of the control. The proposed concept is characterised by relative simplicity and low implementation cost. At the same time, it can be applied to test various types of high-level perception and control algorithms for UAV implemented on embedded platforms. We provide the code developed on GitHub, which includes both Python scripts running on the PC and C code running on Arty Z7.