Model-Based Design, Development and Validation for UAS Critical Software

This paper focuses on the major phases present in the development of critical software for UAS: design, development, testing and validation with flying experiments. A model-based approach is the backbone of all these development phases. The presented approach enables the researchers or engineers to work over the whole development cycle with the same tools, and produces an improvement over the classical design cycle. The model-based approach is illustrated with the development of guidance, navigation and control algorithms applied to rotary-wing UAVs. The paper discusses several implementation issues, including the integration of a hardware in the loop (HWIL) test environment within the model-based development cycle. Finally, several simulations and experimental results for this application are shown.