UAV ground control systems follow-up

Posted by John McHale
Last month I wrote a feature for our print magazine on ground control stations (GCS) for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the U.S. Defense Department's plans for a common GCS that can work with any UAV platform. This week at the AUVSI show in Denver, I had a little chat with George Romanski, president of Verocel, about the efforts he and others are making to build the software architecture for the future GCS.

Romanski said it will use a secure multiple independent levels of security (MILS) software architecture with Linux running on top so to speak. With MILS the secure data will be protected within the MILS architecture.

The architecture will also be certified to the necessary Federal Aviation Administration standards such as DO-178B. The system should be deployed between 2013 and 2015.

I will be doing a more in-depth look at the architecture in the coming months.