Multi-UAV ground control station for gliding aircraft

This paper presents a Ground Control Station based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) which has been developed in order to monitor highly automated multi-UAV missions. The proposed system has been designed in order to easily perform Hardware in the Loop (HIL) simulations. This allows to test the desired algorithms in an environment as close as possible to the one found in real experimentation, which will reduce the costs related to field experiments. The architecture of the system is fully based on open source software, protocols and hardware. Furthermore a new user interface has been developed in order to provide relevant information in multi-UAV gliding experiments. This tool allows the operator to allocate tasks to the UAV and to monitor the operational information. This information can be complemented with the use of open source control stations. The proposed system has been demonstrated in both HIL simulation and in field experimentation. These results are compared in order to indicate how close the simulated behaviour was with respect to the real.