This paper describes a test rig that is used to design and test sensor suites for unmanned air vehicles (UAV) operating in near-earth like environments such as forests, caves and urban canyons. The test rig employs a six degree-of-freedom gantry. Inside its workspace is a full-scale diorama of the environment. Surrounding the gantry are lamps, fans, and generators to reproduce lighting, rain and obscurants typical of such environments. A sensor pod is mounted at the gantry end-effector. The acquired data is fed into a high-fidelity math model of the real UAV. The output is then used to drive the gantry to move the sensor pod in the real world environment. The net effect is a hardware-in-the-loop system that emulates the real UAV’s motions and responses in near-Earth environments. The test rig is important because there is little to no data on sensor performance metrics of UAV in near-Earth environments.
Steering Committee Progress Report on Hydrogen Sensor Performance Testing and Evaluation under the Memorandum of Agreement between NREL, U.S. DOE and JRC-IET, EC