UAV Testbed building and development for research purposes at the American University of Sharjah

Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAV) have enjoyed an unprecedented popularity this last decade mainly due to their autonomy, low risk associated with hazardous operations, and relatively low operational cost. UAV missions range from very simple to extremely sophisticated operations. UAVs are being used in search and rescue operations, highway traffic monitoring, terrain surveillance, and target identification. In military application, UAVs are used for all above operations as well as weapon delivery. Despite many years of research and development, UAVs are still limited in range, agility, performance, reliability, and mission complexity. Researchers are still daunted by many problems related to controls, guidance, navigation, and autonomous functions. AUS is addressing many of these problems by designing and building a cost effective UAV Testbed where several fixed wing as well as rotary wing UAVs can be efficiently designed, tested, and validated. The Model Based Design methodology is adopted as to accelerate the design process of UAV systems and execute design plans in a timely manner. Hardware in the Loop Simulation (HILS) is conducted using the latest embedded system hardware and the latest software tools. The Testbed is made up of several off-the-shelve hardware components and numerous software modules. Most software tools used in the design process are commercial tools, while most of the communication modules and drivers are developed in house. A lightweight fixed wing UAV has been designed, integrated, and test flown using this newly designed test station. The UAV successfully navigated through waypoints autonomously. While airborne, an in board camera took several videos that were streamed live to a ground station. Results have shown that the Testbed has significantly improved the efficiency of the design process. A major enhancement in early error detection has also been observed.