Specifications

FASTER Engineering Model

Figure 74: Tunnel in the sky management block scheme

6.5.6 Virtual Tunnel Block

The virtual tunnel block has been developed during a previous project aimed to

realize an attitude visualization system for a remote piloted aircraft. The control and

visualization system runs on a portable ground station and the pilot is able to control the

aircraft even when the aircraft is not in sight. One of the problems encountered during the

integration of this block inside the main project was its poor management of tunnel

waypoints which was not reliable for many repeated parallel tracks used in

photogrammetric flight campaigns.

In the original application all the waypoints were simultaneously loaded to built a

unique tunnel visible until the end of the mission. When parallel track are too close from

each other, typically tens of meters, tunnel intersections are present and small

displacements from the planned trajectory may induce system errors. Additionally there

were no information regarding the direction in which the tunnel was passed through, so if

the pilot left the trajectory for any reason could re-enter in the wrong direction

unconsciously.

Aware of these issues, most of the work was spent to achieve an enhanced

management of the entire waypoints list trying to avoid any possible visualization

problem during flight operations.

Changes were made to both the Simulink block and the Dynaworlds environment and

the result is the actual configuration of the block presented in Figure 75:

 All waypoints are still stored in a unique file into the xPC target machine (that

must be loaded into the Compact Flash memory before system boot and