This project is my approach to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The overall goal is to gain an understanding of the various aspects of UAVs like microcontrollers, simulators and remote controlled model airplanes. Therefore I needed an environment where most of these aspects can be simulated and explored. The evolving result is the UAV Playground project. Follow me on Twitter if you want to know on what part I'm currently working on.

Features

• Software architecture for interconnecting components through messaging
• GUI independent support for the implementation of visual components
• Specific GUI elements for the Processing Development Environment (e.g. joystick, servo, slider, graph)
• Connection to the FlightGear flight simulator to control the simulator and receive flight and GPS data
• Stabilization through a PID controller for elevator and aileron
• Waypoint and circling navigation
• GPS tracking in Google Earth
• Modular, intuitive and easy to use

Basis

• Java
• Processing Development Environment or Eclipse
• FlightGear Flight Simulator (optional)
• Google Earth (optional)

UAV Playground is a work in progress and will be extended as I work on the exploration of UAVs.

The simplest way to explore and extend UAV Playground is by using the Processing Development Environment (PDE) but as it is written in Java you can use Eclipse as well.

A UAV simulator built with UAV Playground