Immersive Ground Control Station for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Nowadays, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, is growing in several areas, as military, civilian and entertainment. These vehicles can generate large volumes of data, such as 3D videos (three-dimensional) and telemetry data. A challenge is to visualize this data and take flight control decisions based on them. On the other hand, Virtual Reality provides immersion and interaction of users in simulated environments. Therefore, enriching the experience of drones’ users with Virtual Reality becomes a promising possibility. This project aims at investigating how the features provided by virtual reality can be used in planning drone flight, allowing the flight plan creation - flight routes are determined by waypoints (georeferenced points), which contains altitude, latitude and longitude; and monitoring the entire path of mission - presenting information telemetry. To this end, a system of multiprojection is used, which inserts the user in an upcoming 3D environment videos captured by a Drone. The goal of this work is to develop an immersive and interactive control station for controlling, planing flights, and tracking.