Development of a complete UAV system using COTS equipment

This paper describes the development of a complete unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system (navigation software + ground station + specific aircraft) using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment. This development includes conceptual design and tests, as well as hardware and software development. The UAV can be remotely piloted from a ground station equipped with a laptop computer, real-time video, telemetry, interface devices, flight controls (joystick), virtual reality glasses (VRG) and dedicated software. The software installed on the ground station laptop, monitors flight information, captures/updates video and telemetry data in real time, and processes the head-up-display imagery. Using a synthetic vision navigation system (software under development) a 3D path route is created as a second navigation reference. This reference can be used to aid the pilot in navigation. All interfaces between pilot and ground station equipment are user friendly and are shown on the laptop screen and/or on the VRG. The VRG allow for complete pilot immersion into the navigation system.