PX4 Developer Summit 2021

We present a new HITL simulation approach for UAV illustrated in the example of Innopolis vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. It's designed to work with a PX4 flight stack and unlike the existing common approaches of simulation, it allows to use of full hardware in the loop simulation utilizing the UAVCAN network. The new type of simulation covers more autopilot hardware-specific modules that could be useful especially because of the rapid development of the UAVCAN network in the UAV field. This simulator has a modular structure based on ROS. It allows users to interact with additional modules such as the realistic Innopolis Simulator and easily change current dynamics into another, for example, FlightGoggles. Simulation results are based on computational fluid dynamics analyses (CFD) and validated against recorded flight data and performance and limitations of this type of simulation are studied and shown in this work. The developed simulator contributes to the further development of the vehicle and can also be useful for developing UAVs based on the UAVCAN network. New UAVCAN HITL Simulator would be available at https://github.com/InnopolisAero/innopolis_vtol_dynamics