Development of near-real-time simulation environment for multiple UAVs

This paper describes development of a simulation environment for multiple UAVs. The simulation environment consists of several PCs, each of them represents simulated motion of individual UAV and a host PC that controls and monitors the whole UAVs. UAVs can fly individually or sometimes they can cooperate to fly in formation following the leader. Each UAV has inherent stabilization capability and autopilot, while the leader UAV can monitor the motion of other UAVs and perform group coordination. Flight information of one UAV can be transferred to the other UAVs via UDP communication. Several simulation flight sorties were performed from individual flight to formation flight in order to demonstrate the multi-vehicle simulation environment.