Integrated laboratory stand for unmanned aerial vehicles systems design and development

This paper presents a laboratory stand for testing systems of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). By using hardwarein-the-loop simulation it was possible to develop a system which allows checking its essential parts such as wireless communication between the ground control station and autopilot module, control laws and hardware which is to be installed on an UAV. Such a solution makes it possible to reduce the costs and risk especially related to flight tests. By using X-Plane environment as a flying object simulator, it was possible to tune up the autopilot for different object configurations. In the conclusions some possibilities of further development were presented.