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Mechatronics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mechatronics

Technical note

A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based

leader-follower formation ightR
Mohammad A. Dehghani, Mohammad B. Menhaj, Hadi Ghaderi
The Center of Excellence on Control and Robotics, Department of Electrical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran,
Iran

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 30 April 2016
Revised 10 September 2016
Accepted 18 October 2016
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Airborne seeker
Cascade loop control
Formation ight
Hardware in the loop
Leader-follower
Tracking loop

a b s t r a c t
This paper proposes a hardware in the loop simulation testbed by using airborne seekers (an onboard
visual tracking system) as a relative measurement sensor in the leader-follower formation ight. To the
best of the authors knowledge, this is the rst study on experimental applications of airborne seekers
in unmanned aircraft formation ight. The proposed structure gives an effective method to study the effects of uncertainties such as the camera process delay and the seeker measurement noises on formation
keeping. Compensation of errors in visual measurements is considered as well.

1. Introduction
A signicant amount of research efforts have been focused on
the formation control of unmanned vehicles. Excellent surveys of
formation control are found in [1,2] and [3] which review the existing results and the related control approaches. Among various
architectures for formation control, the leader-follower structure is
more popular in which the leader moves along a predened trajectory while another vehicles (followers) keep desired relative distances and orientations from the leader. According to sensing capabilities, formation control can be categorized in three classes:
communication-based, vision-aided and vision-based control [4]. In
the vision-based formation strategy, the follower only is equipped
with a relative measurement sensor and does not know its global
position and orientation.
Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation is an effective technique
that is used for the development and testing of control systems
while some of the control loop components are simulated in a
proper environment and the other components are real hardware.
Today, HIL techniques are frequently used to reduce time and cost
of development and prototyping of engineering systems. Advan-

R
This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor Radhakant
Padhi.

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: m.a.dehghani@aut.ac.ir (M.A. Dehghani), menhaj@aut.ac.ir
(M.B. Menhaj), hadighadery@yahoo.com (H. Ghaderi).

2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

tages of HIL simulation include the possibility to observe and study

system behavior in case of system faults and mechanical parts
degradation in time, as well as sensor sensitivity errors [5]. Currently, extensive research is being carried out in academia and
industry in the development of simulation platforms suitable for
real time HIL experiments. The rst approaches to HIL simulation
were probably realized for (real-time) ight simulation in 1936
[6]. Nowadays, using HIL simulation is common in many industries such as aerospace systems [79], automotive systems [6,10,11],
power systems [1214] and robotics [1517]. For example, in the
eld of unmanned aerial vehicles, [18] introduced a HIL framework for ight test on an unmanned helicopter system which includes onboard hardware, ight control, ground station and software. Moreover, in [19], a HIL platform for vision based control
of unmanned aerial vehicles is proposed. In this area of research,
[20] developed a HIL testbed for visual servoing of xed wing unmanned aircraft. In that work, a visual servoing algorithm is implemented to drive servo motors that control the control surfaces.
Image processing module and visual based autopilot control module are used for the unmanned aerial vehicle on-board systems.
In this paper, we introduce a HIL experimental setup to study
application of an electro-optic seeker in the leader-follower formation ight of unmanned xed wings aircraft. The airborne seeker is
a target tracker which usually is used in homing guidance and provides the LOS (line-of-sight) angular rate and the measurements of
target motion including relative distance and closing velocity (see
[21] and [22] for more details). Recently, using airborne seekers in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.10.015
0957-4158/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
ight, Mechatronics (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.10.015

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Fig. 1. Dened coordinations.

the leader-follower formation ight of unmanned aircraft is proposed in [23] and [4]. However, this work, is the rst attempt for
experimental study of the mentioned topic. Indeed, HIL is a proper
facility to investigate the effect of optic sensor delay and seeker
mechanism dynamics on the formation keeping. For this purpose,
a three dimensional simulation for the leader-follower formation
control is presented and then a seeker hardware is used in respect
to the simulation using a HIL facility. In the proposed HIL setup, we
xed the seeker on a stand and used a monitor in front of it. The
monitor shows a bright spot as the leader image with respect to
the follower. The seeker camera locks on this spot and tracks it to
regulate the desired relative angles in the formation. The real time
HIL simulation results are compared with those of the fully simulated system which just contain a kinematic model of the seeker.
Therefore, effects of the electro-optic seeker dynamics on the formation can be studied carefully.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 describes
the leader-follower system equations in which a point mass model
for the follower is assumed and the relative kinematics is expressed. Section 3 introduces the controller structure which is used
for formation ight. This is followed by Section 4 which explains
the experimental setup of the hardware in the loop implementation for the airborne seeker in relation with the simulation of the
leader-follower system. Section 5 presents the results of the realtime hardware-in-the-loop testbed for formation control of two
unmanned aircraft. Finally Section 6 summarizes the results and
provides concluding remarks.

Fig. 2. Leader-follower geometry in the formation ight problem.

Fig. 3. Schematic of an airborne seeker.

2. The leader-follower system equations

In this section, a kinematic model for the leader-follower system is introduced. For this purpose, consider Fig. 1 in which three
coordinate frames V, L and I as the follower velocity frame, the line
of sight frame, and the inertial reference frame are dened, respectively. Moreover, in Fig. 2 the leader-follower geometry for the formation ight in three dimensional is depicted. In this gure, rL is
the leader-follower relative distance. Moreover, LV and LV are the
leader-follower relative angles in pitch and yaw channels, respectively. A desired formation can be achieved via regulation of these
three parameters to the predened constant values.
We used an electro-optical seeker with a schematic as depicted
in Fig. 3, to measure these kinematic parameters. A proper tracking
loop guarantee that the measured angles VS and VS converge to
LV and LV . On the other hand, if the optic camera is locked on
the leader and the seeker, mounted on the follower, do its tracking
mission carefully, the measured angles are equivalent to the relative angles in the formation geometry.

Fig. 4. The control structure for regulation of the relative distance.

Now let us to describe the leader-follower system model. By

considering dened coordinate frames, motion equation of the follower can be obtained as follows [23]:

= vF cos V cos V ,
= vF sin V cos V ,
= vF sin V ,
= axV ,
a
zV = yV ,
vF
a
yV = zV ,
x F
y F
z F
v F

(1)

vF

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
ight, Mechatronics (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.10.015

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Fig. 5. The control structure for regulation of the relative angle in yaw channel.

Fig. 6. The control structure for regulation of the relative angle in pitch channel.

v xL = vyL zL vzL yL + axL

v yL = r L zL + ayL + vzL xL
v zL = r L yL + azL vyL xL

(4)

3. Formation ight control structure

After introducing the leader-follower system model, in this section we present a control structure to produce the commands signals axL , ayL and azL in Eq. (4). The proposed control method is a
cascade loop control as follows:

axL = k12 [k11 (rLd rL ) vxL ], 

ayL = k22 k21 (LV d LV ) vyL ,
azL = k32 [k31 (LV d LV ) vzL ],

Fig. 7. Block diagram of the hardware in the loop components.

where vF is the follower speed, [axV ayV azV ] is the acceleration

components in the frame V and, V and V are angles of the follower velocity vector with respect to the frame I. [xF yF zF ] is
position vector of the follower with respect to the frame I and [xV
yV zV ] is the angular velocity components in the frame V.
Moreover, by considering L as the LOS frame, the relative kinematic equation can be obtained as follows [23]:

rL = rL


2
2
+ zL
+ axL ,
yL

ayL
r
xL yL ,
rL
rL
azL
r L
= 2 yL
+ xL zL ,
rL
rL

zL = 2 L zL +
yL

(2)

       

vxL
r L
xL
rL
r L
vyL = 0 + yL 0 = rL zL
vzL
0
zL
0
rL yL




where k11 , k12 , k21 , k22 , k31 and k32 are control gains that should be
selected as proper constants and, ( LVd , LVd ) and rLd are desired
values of the relative angles and the relative distance. By using this
control structure, the relative orientation and the relative range can
be regulated to the desired values and therefore results in the desired formation. The proposed cascade control structure for regulation of the relative distance, the relative angle in yaw channel,
and, the relative angle in pitch channel are depicted in Figs. 46,
respectively.
Cascade control is designed to allow the outer loop controller to
respond to slow changes in the relative distance and the relative
angles, while the inner loop controller controls disturbances that
happen quickly in angle rates or in the other words, speed loops.
4. Hardware in the loop testbed

where [axL ayL azL ] is the LOS acceleration with respect to the
frame L and [xL yL zL ] is the angular velocity components
in the frame L. Eqs. (1) and (2) describe the leader-follower kinematic model and are used for three dimensional simulation of the
leader-follower formation ight.
Now, by using the following Coriolis formula

(5)

(3)

in which vxL
vyL vzL is the LOS velocity with respect to the
frame L, the relative kinematic Eq. (2) can be restated as follows:

The proposed HIL framework to handle this problem includes

four parts: a simulator computer, an image generator computer, an
image processor and an electro-optic seeker. The simulator computer calculates the leader kinematics with respect to the follower
body (seeker stand). This data is transmitted to the image generator via a serial port connection. Image generator shows a bright
spot on a monitor which should be locked and tracked by the
electro-optic seeker. Since the tracking loop controller is implemented in the simulation environment, an Input/Output module
provides communication between the simulator and seeker hardware to transmit the required signals. After locking on the bright
spot, the image processor sends the position of it to the simulator
computer to be used in the control loop. Fig. 7 shown the block
diagram of the HIL components communication.

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
ight, Mechatronics (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.10.015

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Fig. 8. Overview of the hardware in the loop testbed.

Fig. 9. Simulated model for the leader-follower formation control loop in the Simulink environment.

Fig. 10. Subsystem of I/O data in the simulation environment.

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
ight, Mechatronics (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.10.015

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Fig. 11. Subsystem of the airborne seeker in the simulation environment.

Fig. 12. Error of visual tracking of the leader position shown by T.

The HIL testbed is depicted in Fig. 8. This gure describes the

proposed idea for testing application of an electro-optic seeker in
formation ight, carefully.
The HIL simulator is a personal computer (PC) with a Windows
operating system. On this PC a MATLAB software as a simulation
environment is installed, which is used to run the plant model.
The mentioned Simulink plant model is shown in Fig. 9.
In this simulation environment, the communication to the other
components of the HIL is provided via an Input/Output subsystem
as depicted in Fig. 10.
In Fig. 11, tracking loop of the seeker and its relation to the
hardware is shown. This subsystem by using camera measurements, seeker potentiometers and gyro measurements, generates
proper signals for the image generator and commands for the
seeker mechanism. The output of airborne seeker block contains
six signals which are used in the formation control structure.
The image processor is a digital signal processor (DSP) which
performs locking on the bright spot (indicating the leader) and re-

ports a two dimensional data of the leader position on the monitor.

To reduce the image processing delay time, a search mechanism is
used which starts in a predened window in center of the camera
eld of view. By using this search mechanism, the processor delay
time reduced to 25 ms. However, an uncertain delay between 50
and 70 ms in processing, monitoring and transmitting of the bright
spot location exist.
The image generator is a PC computer with a Windows operating system. This computer by using received data from the simulation computer, generates a bright spot as the leader location with
respect to the follower frame and shows it on the monitor. In the
image generating process, compensation of image generator error
which is appeared because of the gimbals rotation is considered. To
illustrate the proposed compensation method, consider Fig. 12 in
which a rotation of the seeker gimbals to track the bright spot is
depicted. Considering this gure, it is obvious that,

ss = os os ,

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
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Fig. 13. The HIL result of yaw channel LOS rate in comparison with the pure simulation.

Fig. 14. The HIL result of pitch channel LOS rate in comparison with the pure simulation.

and

and nally one can gets

S
V
os = os = [

0] ,

where is distance of camera lens from the rotation axis. Now, by

using the following equation:
V

ss = VS C S os V os

cos V S cos V S
sin V S
cos V S sin V S


=

sin V S cos V S
cos V S
sin V S sin V S

sin V S
0
cos V S

 

 

0 0
0
0

xss
yss ,
zss

in which VS C is the rotation matrix and considering the relative dis

tance V sT as a known parameter, we have

s T = V sT V ss = [xs T

V 

ys T

zs T ]T ,

st = V ss + V s t  =

xss
yss
zss

d xss

ys T


+ xs T (d xss )
z 

sT
(d xss )
xs T

d
ys T (d xss ) + yss
.
= xs T


zs T
(d xss ) + zss
xs T

Therefore to compensate the mentioned error, 2nd and 3rd arrays of this vector are calculated and considered in transmitting
the leader location to the image generator.

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
ight, Mechatronics (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.10.015

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Fig. 15. The HIL result of yaw channel relative angle in comparison with the pure simulation.

Fig. 16. The HIL result of pitch channel relative angle in comparison with the pure simulation.

5. Experimental results

[V IV ] =
In this section to evaluate the performance of the seeker in the
formation ight of two unmanned aircraft, the HIL results are compared with the results of the pure simulation. In the pure simulation, just kinematics of the seeker measurements are included and,
processing delay of the camera and dynamic of the seeker mechanism are ignored. To model seeker measurements using inertial
position and velocity of the leader and the follower, at rst, based
on the quaternion equations

P =

 
V

1 IV
2
V TIV

IV
0


P,

zV

yV

xV


yV
xV ,
0

the rotation matrix VI C is calculated as follows [24,25]:

p21 p22 p23 + p24 2( p1 p2 p3 p4 )

2 ( p1 p3 + p2 p4 )
I
C
=
.
2( p1 p2 + p3 p4 ) p21 + p22 p23 + p24 2( p2 p3 p1 p4 )
V
2 ( p1 p3 p2 p4 )
2( p2 p3 + p1 p4 ) p21 p22 + p23 + p24
Then, for determination of the relative range and angles, by using the inertial position of the leader I RT and the inertial position
of the follower I RF , we have
V

where

zV
0

RL = VI C I RT I RF ,

and by considering

P = [ p1

p2

p3

p4 ]T ,

RL = VL C L RL

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
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=


=
we have

cos LV cos LV
sin LV cos LV
sin LV

sin LV
cos LV
0

rL cos LV cos LV
rL sin LV cos LV
rL sin LV

LV = atan 

 

cos LV sin LV
sin LV sin LV
cos LV

 
rL
0
0

A1
A2 ,
A3


A3
A21 + A22

 
A
LV = atan2 2 ,
A1

rL =

A21 + A22 + A23 .

Now to calculate the LOS angular velocity, by considering ILC =

and applying the inertial velocity of the leader and the follower, one can gets (4) that results in

I C VC
V
L

Fig. 17. The HIL result of relative distance in comparison with the pure simulation.

r L = vxL ,
zL = vyL /rL ,
yL = vzL /rL .
In the simulation environment, parameters of the controller
(5) are considered as follows:

rLd = 100, LV d = 10 , LV d = 20 ,
k11 = 0.5, k12 = k22 = k32 = 1, k21 = k31 = 50.
A Gaussian white noise with the following specication is observed in the rate gyros measurements:

Pitch channel : variance = 0.153 and mean = 0.166

Yaw channel : variance = 0.044 and mean = 0.100
It is notable that in the seeker application, since the gyros noises
are signicant, a cascade structure is used in which the output of
camera measurements is used (not the gyros measurement), and
noise of this signal is negligible. More details cab be followed in
[26].
Moreover, the main hardware specications of the used electrooptic seeker are as follows:

Fig. 18. The HIL result of 2D trajectory in comparison with the pure simulation.

Field of Regard = 60

Field of View = 5
Maximum Angular Rate = 150 s1

Tracking Ability = 50 s1
Tracking Bandwidth= 10 rad/s
Stability Bandwidth= 100 rad/s
In Fig. 13, the HIL results in comparison with the pure simulation for the LOS rate in the yaw channel are depicted. Since, the
employed hardware require 3 s time for preparing and locking on
the leader spot, in second 3 a little jump is occurred in all the
signals. However, the behaviors of the signals are similar and the
error is not so much.
Note 1. Since in a typical ight scenario, just one time locking on
the leader aircraft is needed; therefore, the 3 s delay occurs in the
rst stage of the ight (before locking), and it is not related to the
ight path of the leader. Indeed, as the seeker locks on the leader,
locking will be kept independent of the leader trajectory.

Fig. 19. Control commands.

The similar results for the pitch channel are shown in

Fig. 14 which conrm a good performance for the seeker.
The seeker performance in the leader-follower formation ight
can be evaluated via Figs. 1517 in which the relative angles and
the relative distance are depicted. According to these gures, regulation to the desired values is performed in less than 15 s. The error signals amplitude between HIL results and pure simulation are

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
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low enough to justify usage of the seeker in the formation ight.

Fig. 18 shows the tracking of dots on the monitor in which quality
of tracking can be justied. Moreover, in Fig. 19 control commands
in three axes are depicted that conrms these signals are in a reasonable range.
6. Conclusions
The paper addressed a hardware in the loop setup to test a
vision based leader-follower formation control. Since we used an
electro-optic seeker as the relative measurement system, the proposed hardware in the loop setup was an attempt to guarantee the
application of this type seekers in the formation ight. The experimental result was conrmed the contributed idea via comparison
of the hardware in the loop data and pure simulation results.
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Mohammad Ali Dehghani received his M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering, control eld from K.N.Toosi University of Technology in 2010. At the present he is a Ph.D.
candidate in electrical engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology. His research interests include control of nonlinear systems, ight guidance, Automation and Instrumentation.
Mohammad Bagher Menhaj received his Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ohio State University (OSU) in 1992. After completing one
year with OSU as a post-doctoral fellow in 1993, he joined Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, where he is currently a Full Professor. From December 20 0 0 to
August 2003, he was with School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science at OSU as a visiting faculty member and research scholar.
His research interests include complex networks, multi-agent systems, nonlinear adaptive control, articial neural networks, and computational intelligence.
Hadi Ghaderi received his M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering, control eld from K.N.Toosi University of Technology in 2012. His research interests include control of
nonlinear systems, ight guidance and estimation theory.

Please cite this article as: M.A. Dehghani et al., A hardware in the loop simulation testbed for vision-based leader-follower formation
ight, Mechatronics (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.10.015