Virtual simulation set-up for UAVs aerial refuelling

The paper describes the simulation set-up of a virtual benchmark for automatic aerial refuelling of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) using the probe-and-drogue method. A complete virtual environment is created to allow the testing of vision-based algorithms. Autonomous UAV refuelling depends strongly on the capacity of the UAV itself to sense the drogue position; a computer vision system capable of estimating the relative displacement and orientation is presented. The simulation setup uses Commercial Off The Shelf software to create a synthetic environment that can be used to test various vision techniques. This paper will present simulation results with the refueling hose modeled by FEM techniques, simple aircraft dynamics, and a vision technique capable of estimating the drogue position using a set of infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs) similar to those that are usually lit on the drogue itself for nigh time manual refuelling.