There are many types of software that are available in the market for managing and controlling your unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The following are some of the most commonly used software for controlling UAVs.
UAV Control
· Airware: This forms a link between the autopilots of the drones that were used in military and those being used by the RC hobbyists.
· APM: Copter: this software has made UAVs capable of a full range of flight and this can be used for advanced aerial photography. This is one of the most sophisticated software and has the capability of providing stability during photography.
· APM: Plane: this airplane gives all the full fledged aircraft the ability to be on full auto pilot. There is great support for numerous 3-D way points, automatic takeoff and landing and mission planning of the levels that are unmatched along with camera control.
· Open pilot: this is an autopilot that has been created by a community that belongs to a group of volunteers and is non-profit. This community is known as open pilot. This software is designed especially for the rotor system that contains more than one rotor. The only concern of the developers is to give to the client quality, safety and an easy to use UAV.
· Paparazzi: this hardware plus software combo is a great open source autopilot system that is aimed at being used for fixed wing aircraft and the UAVs. Since this is open source software anyone can add or make any kind of changes to suit their needs. It is because of the volunteers that this system is getting better day by day.
Ground Station
· Mission Planner: this software is for the ground station and has been created by Michael Oborne. There are various features that are the highlight of this software such as:
o The way point entry is point and click type and you can use Google maps for it.
o There are drop down menus that can be used to select the commands for the mission.
o There is also the provision of downloading the log files for the mission
o The software allows you to configure the AM settings for the UAV.
Image Processing
· Airphoto SE: this software is useful for the UAVs used for the aerial photography and gives a great picture due to all the features present that are necessary for the rectification of the oblique aerial imagery with the geo referenced output. The best part is that it allows for good quality large picture as there are four processors for multithreading that can work on the different parts f the same large photo and all at the same time. The various distortion factors can be controlled in this software. This can be used both by the beginners and the experts in this field. You can even combine your photos with maps, orthophotos or the pictures from satellite.
· Fiji: this is software package that is aimed at image processing. There is use of Java, Java3D and many plugins for menu structure that is coherent in nature for the distribution of image J.
· Image J: this is a program that is aimed at image processing and is available on the public domain. The main feature of this software is that it can display, edit as well as analyze, process and save the print in 8-bit, 16-bit as well as 32-bit. If you want to know about the area and the value of the pixels in the selected area then this software is capable of doing that too.
· Kolor Utopani Giga: this image stitching application of Kolor is considered to be the most advanced one. This is best one to click panoramic images efficiently. The ease of use is also a quality to be mentioned here.
· Mapknitter: this software that is available as free and open source too is majorly effective when it comes to mapping the image. This means that you will be able to locate the place on the map where the photo must be placed.
· Correlator 3D is a patented software by SimActive. It carries out aerial triangulation and is capable of producing dense digital surface models, orthomosiacs as well as vectorized 3D features.
· Imagine Photogrammetry: this has integrated software programs and thus gives best quality strong photogrammetry, GIS, image processing as well as point cloud tools.
· Inpho UASMaster: when your UAS collects the images this software creates the deliverables that match the picture quality and efforts. This has great photogrammetic workstation but is very easy to use.
· Menci Software APS: this photogrammetry software is a great tool for the processing of the large amounts of UAV data and also processing images. This has been tested and is powerful. The requirement of the GPS is a must for APS to handle ground facing data.
· Menci Software OPK Suite: the large format images can be easily processed by this software. This software can produce photogrammetic products from the images obtained from satellite. It is compatible with large cameras such as UltraCam, DMC, DIMAC or from the satellites such as GeoEye, Ikonos, Quckbird etc.
· Agisoft Photoscan: this software is capable of photogrammetry of the digital images as well as generating 3D spatial data. There are many features in this software such as
o Photogrammetric processing
o Dense point cloud: editing and classification
o Digital elevation model
o Georeferenced orthomosiac export
· CMPMVS: this multi-view reconstruction software is known for receiving a set of images in a perspective and the camera calibrations which aids in making a full scene. All the rigid images and items are covered.
· DroneMapper: when the UAV clicks two dimensional photos of the three dimensional landscape then this software offers geospatial mapping solutions. The image processing is both operator assisted as well as automatic one. The features include:
o High resolution digital elevation model
o Digital surface model
o Orthomosaic
o Point cloud creation from fixed wing
