Ground Control Station (GCS) Driver
- The GCS Driver simulates the datalinks and autopilot flight dynamics of simulated UAVs and manned platforms. It receives flight, mission planning, and payload pointing commands from the Ground Control Station, flies the Air Vehicle (AV), and relays sensor pointing information to the payload visualization system. The GCS Driver runs under the Windows 95, 98, and NT environments and communicates (via Ethernet Sockets or serial 232/422) to both tactical and simulated ground control systems.
- The tactical UAV ground systems that the GCS Driver can communicate with are the TALON - Outrider Tactical UAV Workstation, the Tactical Control System (TCS) via the Air Vehicle Standard Interface (AVSI), and the Hunter Short Range UAV Ground Station. Since the real tactical interfaces are stimulated by the GCS Driver the operators can train as if they are communicating with a real UAV over tactical datalinks.
- The GCS Driver provides a simplified 5-DOF (no yaw) autopilot model. The flight models can be changed by modifying air vehicle data configuration files. The Hunter, Pioneer, Outrider, Predator, CL-289, and U2 platforms have been modeled. Typical entries in the data configuration files are min./max. air speeds, climb and turn rates, field of view pointing information, etc.