{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,1,15]],"date-time":"2025-01-15T05:27:06Z","timestamp":1736918826310,"version":"3.33.0"},"reference-count":42,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,19]],"date-time":"2020-02-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1582070400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100012226","name":"Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["4007019109"],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100012226","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"special guiding funds for double first-class","award":["4007019201"]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have multi-domain applications, fixed-wing UAVs being a widely used class. Despite the ongoing research on the topics of guidance and formation control of fixed-wing UAVs, little progress is known on implementation of semi-physical validation platforms (software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop) for such complex autonomous systems. A semi-physical simulation platform should capture not only the physical aspects of UAV dynamics, but also the cybernetics aspects such as the autopilot and the communication layers connecting the different components. Such a cyber-physical integration would allow validation of guidance and formation control algorithms in the presence of uncertainties, unmodelled dynamics, low-level control loops, communication protocols and unreliable communication: These aspects are often neglected in the design of guidance and formation control laws for fixed-wing UAVs. This paper describes the development of a semi-physical platform for multi-fixed wing UAVs where all the aforementioned points are carefully integrated. The environment adopts Raspberry Pi\u2019s programmed in C++, which can be interfaced to standard autopilots (PX4) as a companion computer. Simulations are done in a distributed setting with a server program designed for the purpose of routing data between nodes, handling the user inputs and configurations of the UAVs. Gazebo-ROS is used as a 3D visualization tool.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20041136","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,20]],"date-time":"2020-02-20T08:20:03Z","timestamp":1582186803000},"page":"1136","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":15,"title":["A Semi-Physical Platform for Guidance and Formations of Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Jun","family":"Yang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Systems Engineering Research Institute, China State Shipbuilding Corporation, Beijing 100094, China"}]},{"given":"Arun Geo","family":"Thomas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Delft Center for Systems and Control, Delft University of Technology, 2626CD Delft, The Netherlands"}]},{"given":"Satish","family":"Singh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Delft Center for Systems and Control, Delft University of Technology, 2626CD Delft, The Netherlands"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9752-8925","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Simone","family":"Baldi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Delft Center for Systems and Control, Delft University of Technology, 2626CD Delft, The Netherlands"},{"name":"School of CyberScience and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China"},{"name":"School of Mathematics, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China"}]},{"given":"Ximan","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Delft Center for Systems and Control, Delft University of Technology, 2626CD Delft, The Netherlands"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,2,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Marconi, L., Melchiorri, C., Beetz, M., Pangercic, D., Siegwart, R., Leutenegger, S., Carloni, R., Stramigioli, S., Bruyninckx, H., and Doherty, P. 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