Ground Control Station for UAVs Based on Integrated Maps and Multi-angle Display

The ground control station (GCS) is an essential part of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It has the functions of command dispatching, information monitoring, and navigation and is the core of UAV user interaction. Most GCS only separately display UAV's parameters, and there is a significant error between the position of the two-dimensional (2D) maps. Based on these problems, this paper designs a novel GCS with a multi-dimensional display based on 2D maps, three-dimensional (3D) maps, and real-time image fusion. The GCS software adopts model, view, and control layers (MVC) architecture. It uses multithreading technology to realize parallel execution of multiple tasks, and uses a hybrid database to store UAV's information and image. The field experiment of UAV formation controlled by GCS verifies the system's effectiveness.