Uniform System for the Rapid Prototyping and Testing of Controllers for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The field of control systems has witnessed an explosion in state-space techniques addressing a variety of critical design issues facing control engineers today. Modem computational tools, such as the MATRIX,. Product Family developed by Integrated Systems Incorporated, allow the designer to quickly design, test and implement control systems based on these state-space techniques. These new computing advances shorten the time required to complete a control design from a few years to a few months. However, as the design process progressed new inputs and outputs were required, which usually resulted in a confusing mess of connections that were hard to follow. Therefore, a universal system was needed that could be used on any controller design to aid in the understanding and tracking of the controller's inputs and outputs. A description of this system is given along with a detailed step by step process on how it was implemented on a Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV).