Co-simulation digital twin framework for testing future advanced air mobility concepts: a study with BlueSky and AirSim

The UK Future Flight Vision and Roadmap outlines the anticipated development of aviation in the UK by 2030. As part of the Future Flight demonstration segment, project HADO (High-intensity Autonomous Drone Operations) will develop, test, and deploy fully automated unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operations at London Heathrow Airport. Cranfield University is leading the synthetic test environment development within the HADO project, and a digital twin (DT) prototype was developed to enable mixed-reality tests for autonomous UAS operations. This paper enhances the existing DT by introducing new co-simulation capacities. Specifically, a co-simulation DT framework for autonomous UAS operations is proposed and tested through a demonstrative use case based on BlueSky and AirSim. This prototype integrates the traffic simulation capabilities of BlueSky with the 3D simulation capabilities of Airsim, to efficiently enhance the simulation capacities of the DT. Notably, the co-simulation framework can leverage the 3D visualization modules, UAS dynamics, and sensor models within external simulation tools to support a more realistic and high-fidelity simulation environment. Overall, the proposed co-simulation method can interface several simulation tools within a DT, thereby incorporating different communication protocols and realistic visualization capabilities. This creates unprecedented opportunities to combine different software applications and leverage the benefits of each tool.