Aircraft Simulator

[brentjustice]

I created an aircraft simulator in LabVIEW to test the dynamic handling of different RC aircraft designs and configurations.  The brunt of the mathematical work occurs in MATLAB which exports a linearize state space of the aircraft dynamics.  LabVIEW then runs the state space in real-time with joystick inputs for controlling the aircraft ailerons, elevator, rudder and motor power.

I've shared the code with the community here

Here is a cool video featuring the code in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJWQdrnrXjA&feature=youtu.be

My goal with this post is to share my code and get comments and feedback.  Tell me what you think!  Thank you 🙂

[Jacobson-ni]

Brent,

Very Cool!

How do you generate the text files for the different aircraft and is there important information in the .txt files or is all the information in the .ini file and the text files are just for visuals?

[brentjustice]

Thanks!

The text files contain a state space.  This is a representation of a linearized set of dynamical equations.  Here is a mathworks page that has a fairly decent description of this.  The state space is what describes the aricraft and how it handles and responds to inputs.  The .ini file only affects GUI indicator ranges.

The foldern named "Flatearth" contains a bunch of Matlab code that creates the state space config files from an input aircraft configuration input constants file.  If someone wanted to "fly" their own aircraft design, they would have to create an input file to Flatearth, run "FlatEarth_to_Simflight.m" within Matlab, and then run the Labview code.  Very easy to do! 

Thanks for the interest, I didn't think anyone would post a reply 😄