Simulation and Visualisation Software for an Elastic Aircraft for High Altitudes based on Game Engine Technology

The aim of this thesis work was to design and develop a simulation and visualization platform based on game engine technology, that could be applied to any robotic system and would provide tools for representing the robot, visualizing the environment around it in a high level of detail and also provide means of sampling this environment in order to enable external simulation of interactions between the robot and its surroundings. The main design goal is for the platform to be able to have external physics simulations (robot and robot-environment interactions) entirely separated from the game engine environment. To this end, Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) has been chosen and the platform was implemented as a modular UE4 project, by making use of engine-specific structures. Interfacing between these modules and external ones has been achieved by designing and implementing a middleware interface for the platform, therefore enabling access to the middlewares data transfer system. Finally, this software-in-the-loop chain created between the UE4 modules and the external modules with the middleware as a transfer point has been evaluated in terms of feasibility and functionality by conducting tests on the various modules and interfaces thereof. The outcome is a powerful, flexible and ready-to-use simulation and visualization platform that can be easily adapted to any robotic system and provides the necessary means to accurately sample a customizable, high-quality environment in the vicinity of the robot