SwarmSim: a framework for modeling swarming unmanned aerial vehicles using Hardware-in-the-Loop

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarm applications, algorithms, and control strategies have experienced steady growth and development over the past 15 years. Yet, to date, most swarm development efforts have gone untested and unimplemented. The major inhibitors to successful swarm implementation seem to include the cost of aircraft systems, government imposed airspace restrictions, and the lack of adequate modeling and simulation tools. This paper examines how the open-source OpenEaagles simulation framework was leveraged to bridge this gap to create Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulations. Leveraging OpenEaagles through software extension to create HIL simulations provides developers with a functional capability with which to develop and test the behaviors of scalable and modular swarms of autonomous UAVs. Using HIL-based simulations in this capacity provides assurance that defined behaviors will propagate to live flight tests in the real world. The demonstrations in the work show how the framework enhances and simplifies swarm development through encapsulation, possesses high modularity, provides realistic aircraft modeling, and is capable of simultaneously accommodating multiple hardware-piloted and purely simulated swarming UAVs during simulation.