A UAV Testbed for Diagnosing Hardware Vulnerabilities: Quantifying Sim-to-Real Discrepancies in PX4 Flight Logs

This paper presents a comprehensive UAV testbed that establishes quantitative baselines for hardware vulnerability diagnosis and cyber–physical security validation by leveraging comparative flight logs from PX4-based Software-In-The-Loop (SITL) simulations and multiple real-world quadrotor missions. The testbed utilizes a unified data pipeline centered on the uORB message bus and ULog format, enabling the extraction of high-resolution telemetry, including raw Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) data, state-estimation, and actuator control signals. Evaluated across varying environmental conditions, side-by-side time-series and statistical analyses reveal critical sim-to-real discrepancies in sensor fidelity, GPS interference, and onboard resource behavior that are often overlooked in virtual environments. Real-world data exposes hardware-induced noise, mechanical vibrations, and electromagnetic disturbances that significantly impact flight stability and system reliability. By mathematically quantifying these discrepancies (e.g., via variance and probability distribution shifts), the proposed testbed establishes a rigorous baseline for distinguishing natural physical variability from anomalous or adversarial behavior. Ultimately, this work provides a foundational framework for developing robust anomaly detection models and validating the cyber–physical security of autonomous UAV systems in safety-critical environments.