  The main motivation of this work is to propose a simulation approach for a
specific task within the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) field, i.e., the visual
detection and tracking of arbitrary moving objects. In particular, it is
described MAT-Fly, a numerical simulation platform for multi-rotor aircraft
characterized by the ease of use and control development. The platform is based
on Matlab and the MathWorks Virtual Reality (VR) and Computer Vision System
(CVS) toolboxes that work together to simulate the behavior of a quad-rotor
while tracking a car that moves along a nontrivial path. The VR toolbox has
been chosen due to the familiarity that students have with Matlab and because
it does not require a notable effort by the user for the learning and
development phase thanks to its simple structure. The overall architecture is
quite modular so that each block can be easily replaced with others simplifying
the code reuse and the platform customization. Some simple testbeds are
presented to show the validity of the approach and how the platform works. The
simulator is released as open-source, making it possible to go through any part
of the system, and available for educational purposes.
