Design and realization of ground control station for multi-propeller multifunction aerial robot

A multi-propeller multifunction aerial robot (MMAR) consists of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle and dual manipulators. The novel robot has special function such as interacting with environment and aerial operation in addition to the autonomous flight. Therefore, it requires effectively monitor and control to achieve the designed function. This paper presents a ground control station (GCS) which is designed to deal with the control requirements of MMAR. The instructions and data are transferred through a radio frequency (RF) link established between MMAR and GCS. Software of this GCS is built based on MFC dialog application in VC++ environment. Using MapX component to build electronic maps, functions of GIS are put into this software for planning path, showing flight trajectory and building eagle-eye map. Flight attitude of MMAR is real-time displayed and imitated by virtual instruments and OpenGL model. The data of MMAR status and the mission planned is stored and accessed by ADO. Status monitoring, mission planning, motion controlling, data processing and robotic debugging can be achieved by the GCS presented. The test results show that this GCS realizes the function required which will be contributed to expand the application of MMAR.