Can you imagine how unique it feels to control an aircraft autonomously remotely using only the flight controller on it? Today, ground station programs are actively used in unmanned aerial vehicles used in all civil and industrial areas. As a result, the number of users of ground station programs (Mission planner) is increasing day by day. In this article, we will discuss the Mission Planner ground station program, which many people interested in unmanned aerial vehicles have experienced or actively used at least once.
If you are interested in drones, you can read our other content.
History of Mission Planner
Mission Planner was developed by software engineer Michael Oborne in August 2010. Mission Planner is an open source ground station program developed for the Ardupilot (APM) project. With the advantage of being open source, thousands of developers have been actively playing a role in the development of the program since 2010.
Which Vehicles Can Be Controlled with the Mission Planner Program? What is Mission Planner?
Mission planner provides control of many vehicles in the air, on land, on the surface of water and under water. In addition, it enables autonomous movement of the tracking antenna to ensure data and image flow between the aircraft and the ground station.
1)Multicopterler
QuadCopter
HexaCopter
Dodeca-HexaCopter
OctaCopter
TriCopter
QuadX8
Bicopter
2)Helicoptes
Helicopter
HeliQuad
Synchropter
3)BOAT
Sailboat
Air-Boat
4)Antenna Tracking system
The Pixhawk flight control card on the unmanned aerial vehicle sends the data coming from the aircraft to the telemetry module to the pixhawk on the antenna tracking mechanism. Thanks to this, it enables tracking of the aircraft from the ground with the coordinate data received from the telemetry module.
Note: We will talk about the antenna tracking system in a different article soon.
5)Balance Bot
What are the advantages of Mission Planner?
- With its user-friendly interface, it allows the user to understand many functions in a short time.
- Mission Planner has become the choice of many users due to its Ardupilot compatibility and easy use of the parameters on the aircraft in the ROS (Robot Operation System) application.
- In ROS applications implemented with the simulation feature, SITL (Software in The Loop) allows the algorithm to be simulated without the need for a real environment.
- Since it is older than other ground station programs, it has more resources on the internet.
Since Mission Planner works based on Ardupilot, there are many flight controller brands and models it supports.
Flight Controller of Ardupilot
- BBBMini* (Linux)
- Beagle Bone Blue (Linux)
- CUAV V5 Plus
- CUAV V5 Nano
- CUAV Nora
- CUAV X7/ X7 Pro
- Drotek Pixhawk3
- F4BY
- Hex/ProfiCNC Cube Black
- Hex/ProfiCNC Cube Orange
- Hex/ProfiCNC Cube Purple
- Hex/ProfiCNC Cube Yellow
- Hex/ProfiCNC Cube Green
- Holybro Durandal H7
- Holybro Pix32 v5
- Holybro Pixhawk 4
- mRo Pixhawk
- mRo Pixracer
- mRo X2.1
- mRo X2.1-777
- Obal Board (Linux)
- OpenPilot Revolution
- PocketPilot* (Linux)
- TauLabs Sparky
- Aerotenna Ocpoc-Zynq
- Emlid NAVIO2 (Linux)
- Furious FPV F-35 Lightning and Wing FC-10
- Flywoo F745 AIO BL_32
- Holybro Kakute F4*
- Holybro Kakute F4 Mini*
- Holybro Kakute F7 AIO*
- Holybro Kakute F7 Mini* (only V1 and V2 are compatible)
- Holybro Pixhawk 4 Mini
- IFlight Beast F7 45A AIO
- IFlight BeastH7 AIO
- Mamba F405 MK2*
- Mateksys F405-SE
- Mateksys F405-STD and variants*
- Mateksys F405-Wing*
- Mateksys F765-Wing
- Mateksys F765-WSE
- Mateksys H743-Wing
- mRo ControlZero F7
- mRo Pixracer Pro (H7)
- mRo Nexus
- Omnibus F4 AIO/Pro*
- OmnibusNanoV6
- Omnibus F7V2*
- Parrot Bebop Autopilot
- Parrot C.H.U.C.K
- RadioLink MiniPix
- QioTek Zealot F427
- SpeedyBee F4 (this board currently is non-verified)
- VR Brain 5
- VR uBrain 5.1
