# Building a Realistic Virtual Simulator for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Teleoperation
## 4 Conclusions and Future Work  
Based on the necessity of simulation tools for UAVs remotely controlled by human operators, this work proposes a framework to build realistic virtual simulators for the teleoperation of these vehicles. The quadrotor is adopted as the study case.  
The framework elements consider the modeling, the dynamic simulation, the interconnection of the dynamic simulation with a virtual environment, and the interaction with the user through a teleoperation scheme.  
In each of the previous elements, realism is incorporated into the simulator. The modeling fully describes the behavior of a UAV and considers the non-conservative phenomena of the operating environment to develop a dynamic simulation close to reality. The virtual environment includes a realistic representation of the UAV and other components familiar to a human operator. Finally, the teleoperation scheme is optimized with a meta-heuristic optimizer to match the behavior of a real-world teleoperated UAV.  
The response of the simulated UAV is compared with that of a real-world one, and similar behaviors are obtained. The above describes the effectiveness of the proposed framework.  
In addition, some advantages of simulators that can be developed through this framework include obtaining an explicit realistic model of the UAV, which can be used in tasks such as identification and controller design. Also, the model can be supplemented with more specific models of the vehicle elements, e.g., the actuators, to obtain simulations closer to reality. Even when the case study of this framework is developed in Unity 3D, it does not depend on a specific technology or platform. In this way, a simulator based on this framework can be implemented using available technology and accessed from different platforms, increasing the availability of this proposal.  
In future work, the realism in the simulator can be improved by considering a more detailed model of the UAV. In this sense, the dynamics of rotors and drivers can be coupled to the model obtained in this work. Also, an enhanced proposal could include the interactions of the UAV with other objects in the virtual environment, e.g., through realistic collision handling. Moreover, simulating the operation of some sensors can improve the feedback to the human user. Finally, the feedback response can be enhanced by using haptic responses.  
Conceptualization, M.E.M.-S. and A.R.-M.; methodology, M.E.M.-S. and [PERSON]-M.; software, M.E.M.-S. and [PERSON]-R.; validation, A.R.-M. and M.A.-P.; formal analysis, A.R.-M. and M.A.-P.; investigation, M.E.M.-S., [PERSON]-R., A.R.-M. and M.A.-P.; resources, A.R.-M. and M.A.-P.; data curation, M.E.M.-S. and J.M.-R.; writing--original draft preparation, M.E.M.-S. and [PERSON]-M.; writing--review and editing, M.E.M.-S., [PERSON]-R., [PERSON]-M. and M.A.-P.; visualization, M.E.M.-S. and [PERSON]-R.; supervision, [PERSON] and [PERSON]; project administration, [PERSON] and [PERSON]; funding acquisition, [PERSON]P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This work was supported by the Secretaria de Investigacion y Posgrado (SIP), the Comision de Operacion y Fomento de Actividades Academicas (COFAA) of the Instituto Politecnico Nacional, and the Direccion de Posgrado, Investigacion e Innovacion of the Tecnologico Nacional de Mexico through the projects No. 9996 and No. 11013.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.