A Ground Control Station for Multivehicular Control and Data Visualization
Subodh Bhandari, Michael Heid, Ajay Bettadapura, Ethan Ito, Daisy Tang · 2015
This paper presents the development of an operating system agnostic Ground Control Station (GCS) with a specialized, scalable communication structure for communicating with multiple vehicles and between different control stations. The software aspect consists of data storage, transmission, and visualization. Data storage is handled by SQLite, a relational database system that guarantees reliable processing of database transactions. It is responsible for managing incoming data from vehicles and responding to queries from the displays. Data transmission and visualization are managed by Qt, a cross-platform application framework that provides packet and serial communication support as well as an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) designer. The interface of the GCS adaptively displays information based on what the user selects, rather than displaying all the data it possesses. In addition, users may interact with the situational awareness map to monitor and maneuver the UAVs and UGVs with real-time data. The hardware aspect of the GCS provides interaction with XBee-PRO XSC S3B radios and Wi-Fi capable hardware. The XBee radio is used for vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-GCS, and GCS-to-vehicle communication to transmit data.