Software for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Senior Project: 2002-2003
Jeffrey Braucher, Daniel Faber, Samuel Neff, Stephen Smith and Steven Williams
Vesta Technology, located in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, is a developer of single
board computers. Their target customers are original equipment manufacturers
who need embedded systems to control their products. They aim to make embedded
systems simple for customers to use as components in their own systems. One of
their current designs is an onboard autopilot system for unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs) called the AP50. The AP50 autopilot is a low-cost flight
control system incorporating navigation and stability control for the UAV.
Vesta Technology was interested in developing a user-friendly application to
interface with the AP50 autopilot, which in turn would control a UAV. In the
existing system, commands must be programmed while the UAV is on the ground, or
by a traditional radio controlled controller.
The goal of this project was to develop an application that will remotely
communicate and control an autopilot over an RF link. This application greatly
simplifies the task of flying a UAV. The AP50 itself can be mounted on many
different UAVs and handles all of the in-flight systems, keeping the craft
airborne. A Windows GUI was developed to control the autopilot from a laptop
computer. It consists of a map, instrument panel, and control panel.
The plane can be flown manually via direct manipulation of altitude, speed, and
heading, or it can be flown on autopilot by setting waypoints on a map or by
setting coordinates prior to flight. Data gathered in flight can be saved and
later analyzed. The system was developed in Visual C++.
 Control Panel
Map
Flight Status
Latitude/Longitude Plot
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