Multi-Mode MAVLink Test Bench AeroQT for Aircraft Simulation and Real-Flight Validation

Recent developments in commercial off-the-shelf flight controllers have paved the way for designing various Ground Control Stations (GCSs). However, these lack flight dynamics control integration. Integrating flight dynamics is necessary to incorporate correct aerodynamics and performance data for effective flight. This article presents a GCS application that enables sustained performance with various COTS controllers. AeroQT is a lightweight Qt framework-based application capable of executing software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) simulations, along with real-flight testing for any aircraft, by integrating MAVLink messages in the same runtime application in which JSBSim and other custom features, such as autopilot modes, obstacle avoidance, and adaptive control (among others), are executed. In this approach, the MAVLink implementation was written in C++ using the MAVLink v2 C++ library for the transmission of sensor and actuator data between AeroQT and Pixhawk. In HITL mode, JSBSim (an open-source flight dynamics modeller) computes the desired actuator response, and MAVLink sends these actuator messages to PX4. With access to both real-time (Via MAVLink) and simulation sensor data (Via JSBSim UDP), AeroQT acts as a comprehensive test bench application for MAVLink-based flight controllers.