Real-time monitoring of flight tests with a novel fixed-wing UAV by automatic flight guidance and control system engineers

Advanced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) become increasingly popular inter alia as low-risk demonstration platforms for new aircraft-design concepts and technologies in aviation industry and research. Due to the experimental nature and complexity of such systems, flight tests regularly require the support of design engineers who monitor and assess the behavior and performance of the aircraft and its subsystems while it is in flight. At the Institute of Flight System Dynamics of the Technical University of Munich (TUM-FSD), the flight guidance and control system for the novel 'SAGITTA Demonstrator' UAV has been developed. It enables fully-automatic operation of the aircraft, which has been successfully demonstrated during the maiden flight campaign in July 2017. This paper presents the challenges of real-time monitoring of a fully-automatic UAV and explains how they were solved within the maiden-flight test campaign of the SAGITTA Demonstrator. The ground station setup and displays that were applied to supervise the flight guidance and control system are presented. Experiences gained during the flight tests are gathered and recommendations derived.