Towards an Open-Source Fully Modular Multi Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Simulation Framework

With the trend towards smart cities, the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is becoming more and more diverse. An economical and insightful way to study the use of UAVs in cities is through the utilization of computer simulations. However, currently available simulators are only of limited use to investigate such scenarios: often they have been developed for a dedicated use case, can only handle single UAVs, or the software was not made available with an open license. In this paper, we present AirMobiSim, a modular and microscopic UAV simulation framework, which is available under a GPLv2 license. AirMobiSim provides the basis for the creation of kinematic and energy models for different UAV types. It can support an arbitrary number of UAVs and can be coupled with other simulators via open interfaces, for example to examine systems using wireless communication between UAVs. We furthermore present our approach for model-building and show that AirMobiSim can already accurately reproduce existing work. We also highlight current limitations and show prospects for future work.