Accelerating UAV Flight Control Software Development and Verification Using MathWorks Solutions

MathWorks (kr.mathworks.com), a leader in technical computing software, announced that Korean Air has developed new UAV flight control software using MathWorks' model-based design.

Engineers at Korean Air’s Aerospace Division directly coded the UAV flight control software, but several drawbacks were discovered in a single flight control system targeting multiple UAV platforms. The algorithms being developed by the engineering team were too complex to be programmed manually using C, and delays occurred due to poor communication between control rule development engineers and implementation programmers. Furthermore, manual code review and unit testing required a significant amount of time and effort.

In order to meet the set deadlines for flight testing and certification, Korean Air needed to shorten the development period by performing design model simulations, automatic code generation, and verification of the existence of runtime errors in the generated and manually written code. Korean Air's engineering team accelerated not only these verification stages but also the entire development process of UAV flight (Unmanned aerial vehicle) control software through model-based design.

Engineers developed Simulink models to specify high-level requirements and modeled flight management and control systems, such as the automatic landing guidance subsystem. Additionally, after performing desktop simulations to verify flight control rules and collect control response data, the Korean Air engineering team analyzed flight test results using MATLAB. Furthermore, they utilized toolboxes provided by MathWorks to predict model parameters related to flight dynamics and performance verification, and designed flight control rules to predict optimal control gains.

Model-based design enabled model reuse and reduced code generation and testing times, resulting in a 60% reduction in the time engineers invest in development. Additionally, while flight testing is costly, model-based design allowed for verification of whether simulations were being performed correctly. For example, the number of flight tests required to verify basic autopilot functions was reduced from 10 to 3. By utilizing MathWorks solutions, Korean Air's engineering team was able to complete development on schedule, and the developed UAV obtained Airworthiness Certification from the Korean government.

Moon Jeong-ho, Senior Flight Control System Engineer at Korean Air, stated, “By utilizing MATLAB and Simulink, we were able to save time and costs by enabling model reuse and improved efficiency,” adding, “Thanks to model-based design, the time required has been reduced by more than 50% compared to manual coding, and the advantages of model-based design have grown as the complexity of the project has increased.”