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Design and development of effective manual control system for unmanned air
vehicle

Article · March 2011

DOI: 10.1109/ICCRD.2011.5764034

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 Design and Development of Effective Manual Control System for Unmanned Air
Vehicle

Muhammad Aamir Zafar , Ansar Rauf & Zeeshan Humza Akhtar

Ashraf RF Planning Officer, Telenor Pakistan,
Department of Electrical Engineering, Paris Plaza, F11 Markaz,
College of E & M.E, National University of Sciences Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
and Technology, Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan humza_4001@hotmail.com
aamirzafar@live.com & {zeeshan-ashraf &
ansarrauf}@hotmail.com

Abstract—Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are remotely

piloted or self-piloted aircraft that are capable of flight without Measured On-Board Control
any on-board operator and can carry cameras, sensors, Data System Element
communications equipment or other payloads. UAVs have
been used in a reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering role, Aircraft Gyro & Roll
including combat and rescue missions. This paper describes Dynamics Accelerometers
development and implementation of remote manual control
system for a UAV. The paper includes design of manual Abs. & Diff.
control of air vehicle to achieve the desired target using a Pitch
Orientation Pressure Sensor
joystick and engine vibrations analysis. XBee-PRO 900 XSC
OEM RF modules are used with extended-range, with 900 GPS & IMU
MHz embedded wireless system, providing end-point Yaw
Atmosphere
connectivity. The wireless transmitter and receiver pairs are Microcontroller
used for data communication link between the ground station
and the receiver on the vehicle. The manual control system is Wireless
developed in a PC based system reducing the cost of overall Location Throttle
Transceivers
system. Microsoft Visual Basic language is used for this control
system.
Figure 1: On-board Architecture of UAV
Keyword-component; Microsoft Visual Basic; Joystick; The content of this paper involves illustration of manual
Remote Manual Control; XBEE Pro 900 XSC; remote control system from the ground station, programmed
efficiently and developed cost effectively in Microsoft
I. INTRODUCTION Visual Basic, using a simple commercial joystick. Flight
An Uninhabited Air Vehicle system is generally guided Control Station, a software architecture based UAV Ground
remotely, which helps to control the flight trajectory of Control Station [1] , [2] and [3], has on ground data logging
UAV by an integrated on-board auto pilot. During a mission and data visualization capability. For Aircraft Dynamics
UAVs are expected to be fault tolerant, to work in high and Instruments display in Flight Control Station, ActiveX
precision, to be able to coordinate the coupling effects control by Global Majic Software, Inc is used to give
within the system dynamics and to have high operator an on-board look. To incorporate telemetry data
maneuverability, and in order to be able to accomplish all of and have a full duplex communication between the on-board
the desired performance characteristics, high fidelity in UAV and Ground Control Station (as Flight Control
dynamic modeling should be achieved, where efficient Station), in [4] and [5], wireless transceivers (XBEE Pro
control system design providing optimum performance 900 XSC OEM Modules) are used from “DIGI”. For on-
limits should be accomplished. board sensory data acquisition, configuration and data
The objective of this paper is to develop a control transmission & reception two dsPIC based Microcontrollers,
command to steer aircraft control surfaces by using manual dspic30f6010A and dspic33fj128mc, are used primarily for
remote control system consisting of a PC [1], joystick, RF sensory data acquisition, sensors configuration and UART
modules for remote connectivity, on-board sensors and communication with RF wireless modules. The reason for
controllers for data acquisition and error handling. In [6] using two micro controllers lies in the fact that a single
and [7], error analysis of on-board sensors, gyroscopes and microcontroller cannot handle the extensive data processing
accelerometers, due to Engine Vibrations is illustrated. The and data filtering along with the task of data handling with
architecture of UAV is shown in “Fig. 1”. the hardware interfaced sensors.
___________________________________
978-1-61284-840-2/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE


 The paper is organized in the following way. In section
II on-board interfaced sensors & programming is
enumerated using data flow diagram. In Section III physical
components performing data acquisition & control are
discussed. Section IV comprises of software and hardware
integration using standard communication protocol and in
section V data of on-board sensors obtained from Engine
mounted UAV using Simulink are shown. Conclusion and
future work is discussed in Section VI.
II. ON-BOARD SENSORS & PROGRAMMING
The overall system configuration is briefly represented
in this section and the hardware used in his research and the
physical integration of the components are also described.
System architecture is shown in “Fig. 2”.
A. PIC Microcontrollers
The dsPIC30f6010a is a 16-bit microcontroller from
Microchip Technology was chosen to configure and
initialize the onboard sensors like IMU, GPS, and Pressure
and temperature sensors.
The dsPIC33f128mc (Microchip Technology,
Inc.,www.microchip.com) 16-bit microcontroller was
chosen to perform Kalman filtering in future of data
obtained from GPS, IMU, Absolute pressure and
Differential pressure sensors and perform controlling 4
servo motor control using Motor Control PWM Channels.
Inertial SD Card
Measurement Unit
SPI
UART2 UART
ADC
GPS dsPIC30F dsPIC33F
UART1 PWM Serial
Module
Pressure Sensors F.C.S
UAV Servos
Figure 2: Flight Control Station Working Model
B. Inertial Measurement Unit
The inertial measurement used is an atomic IMU with 6
degrees of freedom. The processor is an Atmel ATMEGA
168MC running at 10MHz with 6 dedicated 10-bit ADC
channels reading the sensors.
The IMU is interfaced with the dspic30f6014A using
UART2 module of the controller. The sensitivity is set to 2g
and the binary mode for data reception is activated. The data
received from IMU is then fed into dspic33fj128mc along
with the data of GPS for further data processing and data
fusion.
C. Pressure Sensors
The pressure sensors used are MPX4115A. One is the
absolute pressure sensor and the other one is differential
pressure sensor. The pressure sensors are interfaced using
10bit ADC channel of dspic30f6014A.
D. GPS
The GPS used is EM-408 which features a built in
antenna for complete implementation. The modes used are
Geographic position- Latitude/Longitude (GLL) and
Recommended minimum specific GNSS data protocol
(RMC). The protocols are set first time while burning the
code in dspic30f6014A and once the initialization is done,
the GPS signals get locked.
III. DATA ACQUISITION AND CONTROL
In this section of paper the physical components
connected on-board and off-board for data acquisition and
control of UAV are illustrated.
A. SD Card
A 1 GB serial data card is interfaced with the
dspic33fj128mc using serial peripheral interface (SPI). This
card is used for on board data logging during flight. After
data logging, the logged data is read by using another
program burnt on the other controller to retrieve the logged
data.
B. Wireless Transceivers
Xbee Pro-900 transceivers are used for wireless link
between the aircraft and the ground control station. These
transceivers have a range of 6 miles. The joystick control is
also implemented on the aircraft servos and is tested during
Xbee flight. These transceivers are interfaced with
dspic33fj128mc using uart1 module at a baud rate of 9600
kbps as shown in “Fig. 3”.
Figure 3: XBEE Transceivers & SD Card

C. Servo Motor Control
The S3050 Standard High-Torque servo used here,
features high-capacity, high-current wire for low resistance
while maintaining standard servo dimensions and light
weight.
D. Commercial Joystick
The paper includes interfacing of commercial “Logitech
Attack™ 3” joystick consisting of 3 separate axis and 12
push buttons.
IV. SOFTWARE AND HARD INTEGRATION
This section describes the interfacing technique of
joystick with software written in Visual basic and UAV on-
board hardware integration & communication.
A. Joystick and FCS
To have manual control, standalone software Flight
Control Station (FCS) is designed and built using Microsoft
Visual Basic 2010. Software uses DirectX's Direct Input
framework which provides easy access to keyboards, mice,
joysticks, and other human interface devices. Visual
interface for UAV “Flight Control Station” is shown in “Fig.
4”.
Figure 4: Flight Control Station Working Model
B. PWM Motor Control Model
Microcontroller dsPIC33f128MC supports two
dedicated Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) modules, PWM1
and PWM2. PWM1 module is a 6-channel PWM generator,
and the PWM2 module is a 2-channel PWM generator.
Since servo motor is controlled by means of managing
PWM, the module has six PWM output pins, numbered
PWM1H1/PWM1L1 through PWM1H3/PWM1L3.
The period of the PWM is set up using the following
formula:
PWM period = [(PXDCX)+1 ] * 4 * Tosc * (Prescaler value)
The PWM duty cycle is specified by writing to the
PXDC1 and P1DC2 register and to the PXTPER for on and

off time respectively. The overall importance of the control
system is to calculate the required duty cycle for certain
joystick movement to control the servo motor. In our case,
PXTCON, PWM Timer control register was set to have a
pre-scalar of “1:64”, “time base” and “on the fly change in
PWM” was set as PWM varied with the variation in joystick
status.
V. COMPLETE SYSTEM WORKING MODEL
Once the on-board data from all the hardware interfaced
sensors has been taken by dspic30f6010A, a 44 byte packet
is formed and received at FCS which contains the data from
IMU, the pressure sensors and the GPS. This data packet is
then sent using SPI module to dspic33f128mc with a baud
rate of 54.6kbps. In dspic33f128mc the received data is
further processed and sent to FCS using UART1 to XBEE
RF Module. A 16 Byte packet is formed at FCS connected
with joystick, containing data of 3 axis and 2 buttons, and
transmitted using serial communication protocol of RS-232
to XBEE RF Module in pair.
The software “Flight Control Station (FCS)” developed
which uses DirectX Input framework, selects, initializes, set
properties of axes and polls with a timer of 1msec to update
the current status of X, Y and Z axes and buttons of joystick
for roll, pitch, yaw and throttle servo movements by
managing the control surfaces of rudder, elevator, ailerons,
and throttle of DL50 gas powered RC airplane engine.
Software and hardware interfacing model is designed and
adjusted in such a way that each angle corresponds to the
respective angle of joystick axis. The xy-axis of joystick is
used to control aileron, elevator whereas rudder and throttle
are controlled via pushbutton and z-axis of the joystick
respectively. The complete software configuration &
interfacing is shown in “Fig. 5”.
Joystick
FCS (DirectX Input Framework)
Polling Method (Timer 1msec)
Update Joystick States
dsPIC33f128MC PWM Motor Control
Figure 5: Complete Data Flow Model
 VI. SIMULINK DATA WITH ENGINE NOISE
ANALYSIS
This section highlights the practical problems associated

Az (m/s2)
with the engine vibrations and noise to the electronic control
circuitry.

A. Simulink File for Data Reception

To achieve on-board sensor communication directly
with Matlab, Simulink project was developed and used to
receive and plot data directly. This was done to accomplish Time (min)
sensor modeling and noise analysis. The simulink model is Figure 8. Acceleration Z
shown in “Fig. 6”.

Pitch (rad/s)
Time (min)
Figure 9. Pitch
Roll (rad/s)

Figure 6. Simulink Model for Data Reception

B. Engine Noise Analysis
When the UAV electronic circuitary is mounted on the
aircraft, the readings of accelerometers and gyroscopes are
acutely affected. The original data of these sensors can then Time (min)
not be differentiated from any noise present in the data. On Figure 10. Roll
board data logging of accelerometers and gyroscopes
involving engine vibrations are shown in “Fig. 7-11”.
Yaw (rad/s)
Ax (m/s2)

Time (min)
Time (min) Figure 11. Yaw
Figure 6. Acceleration X
VII. CONCLUSION
The software base ground control station is
effective way of reducing system overall cost and weight.
Ay (m/s2)

Usage of ActiveX controls proved as a powerful tool for the

quick development of the Ground Control station. The
developed Ground Control stations on-ground data logging
technique is another feature that enables to view UAV
performance time based. As much of the work is completed
in initial phase of UAV Ground Control Station’s
Time (min) development, however, there are still a number of things to
Figure 7. Acceleration Y be implemented in future. To reduce the effect of Engine
Vibrations, a mechanical low pass filter is to be designed


 followed by a Kalman filter to eliminate the noise from
Accelerometers and Gyroscopes data. A 3-D Navigational
and Tracking System is to be designed as for future work.

REFERENCES
[1] Segor, F., Burkle, A, Partmann, T. and Schonbein, R., “Mobile Ground
Control Station for Local Surveillance”, International Conference on
Systems, pp. 152-157, 2010.
[2] Mladjan Jovanovic and Dusan Starcevic, “Software Architechture of
Ground Control Station for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle”, 10th
International Conference on Computer Modeling and Simulation, pp.
284-288, 2008.
[3] Yiqi Kang and Mei Yuan, “Software design for mini-type ground
control station of UAV”, 9th International Conference on Electronic
Measurement & Instruments, pp. 737–740, 2009.
[4] Philip S. Anderson, “Development of a UAV ground control station”,
M.Sc. Thesis, 2002.
[5] Luo Jun, Xie Shaorong, Gong Zhenband and Rao Jinjun,
“Subminiature Unmanned Surveillance Aircraft and its Ground Control
Station for security”, International Workshop on Safety, Security and
Rescue Robotics, 2005.
[6] Alex Gurtner, Rodney Walker and Wageeh Boles, “Vibration
Compensation for Fisheye Lenses in UAV Applications”, 9th Biennial
Conference of the Australian Pattern Recognition Society on Digital
Image Computing Techniques and Applications, pp. 218-225, 2007.
[7] Chris Reitsma, “A Novel Approach to Vibration Isolation in Small,
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle”, IEEE International Conference on
Technologies for Practical Robot Applications, pp. 84-87, 2009.



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