1. Rovers Simulating Unmanned Aircraft
Nicole A. Pettingill
Lafayette College
Garry Qualls
Engineering Directorate
Laser Remote Sensing Branch
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Headquarters
Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate
The purpose of the summer research was to aid in the planning of the Unmanned
Aircraft Systems Airspace Operations Challenge (UAS AOC), a NASA-sponsored
competition that will take place in the spring of 2014. The competition challenges
competitors to fly unmanned aircraft safely in the same airspace as unmanned and
manned aircraft. The goal of the summer was to develop a ground control system for the
competition officials to monitor and score the competition.
To do this, the competition was simulated by combining software named X-Plane
with flight control software named Mission Planner and a hardware autopilot named
Ardupilot to simulate the behavior of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) in flight.
This system was tested with two ground rovers equipped with Ardupilots. The gasoline-
powered rovers had two servos controlling the steering and throttle, controlled by two
radio channels. The Ardupilots, along with a receiver and transmitter for manual control
purposes, could also control the two servos. The rovers were equipped with various
sensors: light sensors, temperature sensors, current sensors, revolutions per minute
(RPM) sensors and a pitot tube to sense airspeed. With these sensors, useful data was
collected to monitor the rovers’ performance on the ground. In the future these sensors
could be used on UAV’s in flight.
The desired outcome of the project is to have the rovers operate near each other
while maintaining a specified safe distance as they follow individual trajectories. Like
aerial vehicles, they would follow waypoints set in Mission Planner using a global
positioning system (GPS) to determine their precise location.
This research contributes to NASA’s goal of helping the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) make the rules and policies for unmanned aircraft to fly safely in
US Airspace. The UAS AOC competition is a NASA Centennial Challenge, which
allows individuals, academics and the commercial sector to develop and demonstrate new
technologies that could help this nation as a whole.