Unmanned Aircraft System for Rescue Missions

Project goal: To create software to read and manipulate data from two commercial off-the-shelf unmanned aircraft. The unmanned aircraft follow a flight path and gather photographs of the surrounding area. Open source flight-control software ArduPilot is used to program waypoints into the unmanned aircraft using GPS coordinates. The team edited the software to handle directions for two unmanned aircraft, and modified it to output a data log. ArduPilot transfers the gathered imagery and unmanned aircraft statistical data to a mission planner software program coded in C++. The mission planner software displays aircraft velocity, elevation, battery life and photos via a graphical user interface, and generates a report for subsequent analysis and processing by proprietary software provided by the sponsor.