Measure Ground Control

Introduction

Measure ground control (MGC) is an application in which there is everything from flight operations to mission creation and data management. A benefit of Measure over DJI GSP is that one person can create flights and assign them to different pilots. 

Methods

In learning this application's uses, we watched an instructional video on how Measure ground control is used link. The application is divided into a few subcategories. 

Missions & Checklist

In the missions section of MGC, the pilot can create missions and view their missions to complete and the missions that they have completed. The other portion of this subsection is the checklist. In the checklist, the user can set up a checklist to aid in the mission. A checklist is an important function of an operation because they ensure that the aircraft is set up the same way every time, no matter who uses the aircraft and sensors. 

Figure 1. Mesure ground control checklist function

Airspace map

The airspace map feature in measure allows the user to check what airspace their mission is in and see if they need to submit a LAANC request for that area. The MGC application has an Airmap based LAANC built-in, decreasing the number of applications that the pilot has to use during an operation, increasing efficiency. 

Figure 2. Measure Ground Control Airspace map overview of Washington, D.C. 

Settings

The settings section allows the pilot to adjust varying features. The different feature sets that the pilot can adjust are the General settings, Camera & Imagery settings, Custom Map Tile Layers, Remote Controller Settings, Gimbal Calibration, Imu Calibration and Compass Calibration. Each of these settings sections allow the pilot to modify how the aircraft operates in a contingency, calibrates a sensor, or adjust all operations. The main settings are not to be used on a per mission basis and primarily focused on being established as an operational standard. 

Figure 3. The settings section of Measure Ground Control

Fly

The Fly section is where the pilot would be for manual flight operations. The goal of MGC was to create a decluttered version of the DJI go flight screen, so it is similar to DJI Go. MGC allows for a few nonstandard special flight mode functions, such as Blade inspection and Pole inspection, to aid in the operation of a UAS in those scenarios. All flights completed in this will automatically be logged in the flight portal.  

Flight Plans

The pilot can create a grid or waypoint route for the uas to operate on in the flight plans section. The pilot can also use a KML file to import a previously made flight plan. You can set the front lap, sidelap, speed, direction, and altitude for grids and provide an estimated resolution for that aircraft. For a waypoint route, you can set various settings for each waypoint and how the aircraft will go about flying the route. The actions can be to hover, take a photo, stop the video, rotate the drone, capture panoramas, or change the gimbal position. Once the plan is created, it can be saved with a flight name, mission type, and other information. A pilot and payload operator can be assigned to the flight plans as well.

Conclusion and Reflection

In conclusion, MGC fits into future UAS operations with the management of a fleet of pilots and aircraft. It is a higher up application that allows for there to be different levels and roles of users with the same application. This relates to integrating uas traditional ops where there is only one account with all the missions, and now each pilot can be given their missions and not be able to modify other pilot's flights by mistake. It also records various metadata from the flight and logs that information.  This application uses both the cloud and big data to make this happen, the cloud allows for flight to be created by one person and shared with the pilot, and then the data is sent to the processing people after the data is collected. The big data aspect is the flight logging and the impact of getting all the metadata from each of the flights.