Developing Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Systems as Testbeds for CubSat Satellites

The possibility of a low-cost alternative to conventional micro-gravity testbeds used to design, test, and tune attitude control and tracking algorithms for Cube Sat satellites could dramatically decrease the development cycle of these systems. The alternatives that exist, if not limited to three degrees of freedom, are intricate and expensive. This paper introduces a novel architecture to shortening the development cycle for CubeSat satellites using multirotor unmanned aerial systems (MUAS) as testbeds. The architecture presented is for the development of CubeSat satellites consists of four design steps: model characterization via system identification, control synthesis, firmware-hardware integration, and certification via flight-testing experiments. Moreover, system identification results are presented for roll, pitch, and yaw models. The yaw model determined from system identification is applied to synthesize and simulate an azimuthal tracking controller of a CubeSat in circular orbit. Simulation results demonstrate good performance, which is characterized as the difference between the desired and actual tracking. Findings from preliminary studies of system identification and control synthesis processes will be used to advance the remaining phases of the development cycle proposed in this paper