Drone Mission Planning Software

Drone Mission Planning Software is a project to design and develop a graphical user interface for drone mission/flight planning. The goal is to be able to upload a flight plan, created using a graphical user interface on a computer, using XBee hardware modules (connected to the source computer and another attached to a drone) and XAPI.

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Mentor
Brandon Ortiz

Instructor
Professor Bruce Bolden

Project Semesters:
Fall 2014 & Spring 2015


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Problem Definition
To design and develop a graphical user interface for drone mission/flight planning. The graphical user interface needs to allow 3-dimensional presentation in a user-friendly manner. The software also needs to monitor underway missions. This includes updating way points, aborting flights, allowing manual override. Our goal is develop this software in order for it to be expanded by future plugins.

Background
This project began with the work of a group of University of Idaho Freshman attempting to implement Brandon Ortiz's XAPI micro-controller service manager in order to send commands remotely to a drone. Upon starting our work, we were tasked with needing to modify the current drone in order to produce stable flight and build upon the previously built chat program used to send messages from a computer over a serial connection.

Deliverables

 * 1) Stable drone design and documentation
 * 2) Defined XAPI command structure for drone command processing
 * 3) A graphical user interface for mission planning

XAPI
XAPI is an API that allows a user to send/received local TUN packets over XBee hardware. XAPI will manage services on our Arduino boards used to send, receive, and process commands.

Below is a link to the architecture document provided by Brandon Ortiz, it includes an overview of the XAPI architecture, TUN packet format, and example usages of XAPI. https://github.com/bigwookiee/Mission-Control/blob/master/xAPI/XAPI_CLASSES/Architecture%20Overview.docx

Document Archive
Initial Client Interview Transcript: