This paper focuses on a hardware-in-the-loop facility aimed at real-time testing of architectures and algorithms of multisensor\r\nsense and avoid systems. It was developed within a research project aimed at flight demonstration of autonomous non-cooperative\r\ncollision avoidance for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. In this framework, an optionally piloted Very Light Aircraft was used as\r\nexperimental platform. The flight system is based onmultiple-sensor data integration and it includes a Ka-band radar, four electrooptical\r\nsensors, and two dedicated processing units. The laboratory test system was developed with the primary aim of prototype\r\nvalidation before multi-sensor tracking and collision avoidance flight tests. System concept, hardware/software components, and\r\noperating modes are described in the paper. The facility has been built with a modular approach including both flight hardware\r\nand simulated systems and can work on the basis of experimentally tested or synthetically generated scenarios. Indeed, hybrid\r\noperating modes are also foreseen which enable performance assessment also in the case of alternative sensing architectures and\r\nflight scenarios that are hardly reproducible during flight tests. Real-time multisensor tracking results based on flight data are\r\nreported, which demonstrate reliability of the laboratory simulation while also showing the effectiveness of radar/electro-optical\r\nfusion in a non-cooperative collision avoidance architecture.
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