Construction of an improved semi-physical simulation system for UAV with integrated energy-consumption prediction model and its evaluation of the path planning algorithms in mountainous scenery

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are playing an increasingly critical role in military surveillance missions. However, due to safety and economic issues, it is necessary to validate the UAV performance and algorithms in a semi-physical simulation environment before the real flights. In this study, the mechanical structure and control system of the semi-physical simulation system is developed for the UAVs. In order to better simulate the attitude of the UAV during a flight, the flight attitude simulator is designed. Also, a sand table of the mountainous scenery from real inspection tasks is developed to work with the simulation system. Path planning algorithms are embedded in the platform, and improvements and evaluations of traditional algorithms are carried out. Then, an improved adaptive particle swarm optimization (IAPSO) algorithm is proposed to improve the accuracy of the path of UAVs. An energy-consumption prediction model is established for the platform. By combining the IAPSO algorithm with the energy-consumption prediction model, the best path with low energy consumption can be obtained. Finally, the effectiveness of the simulation system is verified by comparison experiments of the mathematical simulation, semi-physical simulation, and real flight.