Rebuilding Our Ground Control Station: A Fresh Start for 2024-2025

At the start of this year, we took a step back to critically evaluate our Ground Control Station (GCS) architecture and supporting data pipelines. Our previous GCS, built for the first time during the 2023–2024 season, was an exciting milestone for SUAV. However, it was clear that significant improvements were needed. While many of our high-level design concepts proved promising, we recognized that long-term maintainability, robustness, and reliability were essential to make the system sustainable for future teams.

To support our mission this year, we’ve chosen to rely on Mission Planner, a widely used ground control station that integrates seamlessly with ArduPilot. Mission Planner offers built-in support for mission uploads, parameter configuration, and telemetry visualization. Most importantly, it’s a familiar tool for our team and has proven to be dependable. Given its strengths, we felt no need to transition to another GCS platform this year.

That said, we are still planning a full redevelopment of our Custom Ground Control Station (CGCS) and onboard mission computer software. Last year’s version was developed quickly, and while functional, it lacked the polish and resilience needed for long-term use. Our new approach focuses on two main goals:

• Embedded system control: Handling onboard functions such as imaging and payload deployment
• Redundant flight control: Operating over a separate datalink from Mission Planner, our CGCS provides a backup method for monitoring and controlling the aircraft during flight. This increases system reliability and safety

As we begin this redevelopment, we’re building on what worked well last year while applying lessons learned to create a more cohesive and sustainable system. Here are the core principles guiding our rebuild:

• Consistent and simple architecture: To reduce onboarding time and avoid fragmentation, we’re minimizing the number of frameworks and tools. For example, we’re standardizing both our mission computer and CGCS backends using Flask
• Intuitive user interface: The CGCS should be operable by any trained team member with minimal instruction. A clear and simple UI for payload control is essential for mission success
• Robust testing infrastructure: To prevent regressions and ensure reliability, we’re establishing a proper testing framework. Wherever possible, we will implement automated unit and feature tests. When automation isn’t feasible, we’ll log mandatory manual tests that must be completed before any software release qualifies for flight
• Clean, maintainable code: Our software is designed not just for this year, but for those who come after us. We’re adopting practices like standardized RESTful API communication to ensure clarity and ease of extension across subsystems

This rebuild is more than a technical upgrade. It is a strategic investment into the long-term success of SUAV’s avionics software. We’re excited to see how our new software unfolds for SUAS 2025!