Sensors for Unreal Engine Simulation

R2026b

UAV Toolbox provides Simulink blocks that model camera and lidar sensors in a 3D virtual environment. This environment is rendered using the Unreal Engine^® from Epic Games^®. Use these blocks to generate synthetic sensor data for testing perception and navigation algorithms without physical hardware. For an overview of the simulation architecture, see How Unreal Engine Simulation for UAVs Works.

The table summarizes the available sensor blocks and how to visualize their outputs.

Sensor Block	Description	Visualization	Example
Simulation 3D Camera	Camera with lens based on the ideal pinhole camera. See What Is Camera Calibration? (Computer Vision Toolbox) Includes parameters for image size, focal length, distortion, and skew Includes options to output ground truth for depth estimation and semantic segmentation	Display camera images, depth maps, and semantic segmentation maps by using a Video Viewer (Computer Vision Toolbox) or To Video Display (Computer Vision Toolbox) block.	Depth and Semantic Segmentation Visualization Using Unreal Engine Simulation
Simulation 3D Fisheye Camera	Fisheye camera described by the Scaramuzza camera model. See Fisheye Calibration Basics (Computer Vision Toolbox) Includes parameters for distortion center, image size, and mapping coefficients	Display camera images by using a Video Viewer (Computer Vision Toolbox) or To Video Display (Computer Vision Toolbox) block.	Simulate Simple Flight Scenario and Sensor in Unreal Engine Environment
Simulation 3D Lidar	Scanning lidar sensor model Includes parameters for detection range, resolution, and fields of view	Display point cloud data by using pcplayer (Point Cloud Toolbox) in a MATLAB Function block.	UAV Package Delivery
Simulation 3D Ultrasonic Sensor	Ultrasonic sensor model that generates range measurements based on the distance to the closest object Includes parameters for detection range and fields of view	Display range measurements by using a Scope block.	Build Occupancy Map Using Simulation 3D Ultrasonic Sensor (Automated Driving Toolbox)