A Robotic Arm-Based HILS Platform for Attitude Control Logic Verification of a Quadrotor Drone
摘要
Attitude control is a critical requirement for ensuring the stability and mission success of aerospace systems, but direct in-flight verification is often risky and expensive. To address this challenge, this study develops a robotic arm-based hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform that enables the validation of control logics in a safe and flexible laboratory environment. The platform employs a six-axis articulated robotic arm to reproduce vehicle motion, and two coupling schemes are introduced: a kinematically coupled approach, where only attitude angles are measured, and a dynamically coupled approach, where forces and torques are additionally measured. For a drone implementation, a translational scaling factor is applied to compensate for the limited workspace of the robotic arm while maintaining decoupled rotational dynamics. Experimental results confirmed that the robotic arm effectively reproduced drone motion, allowing reliable verification of the attitude control logic. The proposed platform bridges the gap between numerical simulations and real-world testing, offering a practical and scalable framework for improving control performance and system robustness.