Introduction

A software in the loop simulation consists of a Simulink model that simulates the behaviour of the system formed by the autopilot and a vehicle, without having the physical devices connected to the computer, in contrast to the HIL which has both the autopilot and (optionally) vehicle connected to the PC. This option has several advantages when it is compared with a HIL setup:

• Complete simulations without any hardware.

• Possibility of using your own vehicle model: user can define the dynamics of his vehicule (with the desired complexity) without using external programs, like Plane Maker.

• Possibility of simulating differents kinds of sensors even if they are not fitted in Veronte. All you need is the raw sensor reading.

• All results can be exported/visualized to MATLAB workspace simultaneously.

• Veronte Block runs faster than real time, allowing the user to execute a series of simulations in a short time. This feature depends on the complexity of the model and the capability of the computer where the simulation is running.

• Light computational load.

Requisites

In order to run a SIL simulation with veronte autopilot the followings programs and toolbox are required:

• MATLAB + Simulink (basic package).

• Simulink Real-Time : this blockset contains useful blocks to be used with buses: UDP/RS232/CAN.

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 (or later) as your MEX compiler. Despite .mex file is already compiled and it works as a black box, some libraries are necessary.

Moreover, the user can be helped by other toolboxes when implementing their model, such as Aerospace toolbox: contains sensor blocks, flight instruments and environment blocks.