RPAS Applied to the monitoring of areas with different priorities with employment of a groung control station for dynamic operation by task-based interface

Abstract

This work presents a system to control multiple small remotely piloted aircrafts. The purpose of the system is to provide autonomous control of aircraft while providing a high-level, task-based user interface that can make possible a dynamic mission control by a single operator. To maintain the situational awareness, aircrafts must form a network, through which the sending of the sensed data by distant aircraft and without reach of the control station can be retransmitted by closer aircraft. For the coverage task, a gradient priority monitoring approach was proposed, by partitioning the area in concentric layers, whose refresh rate varies gradually across the layers. For the validation of the proposed system, simulations and real flights were carried out with a fleet of quadcopters connected to the developed ground control station system. In actual flight experiments, it was possible for a single operator to control a fleet of three quadcopters. By analyzing the flight log data of each aircraft, it was possible to validate the fulfillment of the objectives proposed for the developed system.