Optical State Estimation and Simulation Environment for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: 8,942,964

The present disclosure relates to a method and system for simulating an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and simulating an environment in which the UAV may be flying. A plurality of visual sensors, e.g., cameras, positioned on the UAV, may be simulated. A UAV simulator is configured to simulate the UAV and a graphical simulator is configured to simulate the environment. The UAV simulator may be configured to: estimate pitch, roll and/or groundspeed based, at least in part, on outputs from the visual sensors, determine a position and/or an orientation of the simulated UAV in the simulated environment based, at least in part, on the estimate(s) and provide the position and/or orientation to the graphical simulator. The graphical simulator may be configured to display the simulated UAV at the position and/or orientation in the simulated environment and/or to display the simulated camera view(s).