Control Station Analysis - QGroundControl

The development of QGroundControl (QGC) rose out of the PIXHAWK Project around 2009/2010.  This open source application was initially designed around “aerial robotics using computer vision.” (PIXHAWK, n.d.)  Since this time, it has expanded out to allow operators and developers to be able to visualize and control air, land, and water autonomous unmanned systems, “during development and operation, both indoors and outdoors.” 

Although the system was initially designed around the PIXHAWK autopilot, the application has matured to include: PX4 Autopilot, ArduPilotMega, SLUGS Autopilot, FLEXIPILOT, UAVDevBoard/Gentlenav/MatrixPilot, SmartAP AutoPilot, Parrot AR.Drone 2.0, AutoQuad 6 Autopilot, as well as others.  Although the majority of the systems that seem to be targeted with this application are designed for aircraft autopilots, the developers have created a bridge that allows MAVLink to communicate with the open source Robot Operating System (ROS).  This messaging bridge enables the use of both unmanned ground and sea vehicles to be controlled using QGC.  MAVLink is the “Micro Air Vehicle Communication Protocol” that was also developed as part of the PIXHAWK Project in 2009.  MAVLink was designed to support an open standard to facilitate adoption by developers of other systems in order to support interoperability between the systems.  This protocol is being used on numerous autopilots, software packages, and other projects (MAVLink, n.d.). 

Some of the key features of this application (beyond being open source and supporting multiple autopilots!) include the visualization using 2D and 3D maps.  The system supports setting way-points directly in the Google Earth plugin (Whitehead, 2014): 

For sensor and telemetry data visualization, the system can plot this data in real time, as well as provide a heads up display for video from the vehicle’s sensor:

  

  
As part of this project, I downloaded and installed a copy of the application.  Overall, it was fairly quick to load and worked first time.  With only a couple issues, the application worked fairly smoothly; which is sometimes not the norm for open source applications.  One limitation of the system is that you only have a basic capability of route planning and playback if you don’t have an autopilot that you can connect into the application.  

Overall, I feel that this application has a lot of strengths and flexibility when it comes to controlling disparate systems (air, land, and sea) simultaneously.  In closing out this post, here's a quick video showing the application in use QGroundControl Demo:

References:    

MAVLink Micro Air Vehicle Communication Protocol. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://qgroundcontrol.org/mavlink/start

PIXHAWK. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://pixhawk.ethz.ch/

Whitehead, T. (2014, September 24). My Google Map Blog. Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://mygmap.net/?tag=qgroundcontrol