DroneAGE: an Advanced Graphic Environment for planning and control of Drone missions

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs, commonly known as "drones") have proven to be useful as a platform for remote sensing (RS), that is the acquisition of information about objects, areas or phenomena from a distance, without making physical contact. Benefits are the operational flexibility, the possibility to be used in challenging situations and the higher spatial and temporal resolution of acquired data if compared with alternatives (satellites, aircrafts, ground vehicles, etc.). The paper presents DroneAGE, a software system that supports RS missions featuring UASs bearing different users, ranging from the mission planner to the pilot to the recipient of measured data. The main component of the system is a virtual environment (VE) that shows the operational scenario and contextualizes relevant information about it; the goal is to provide unordinary features (i.e. usually unavailable within the tools bundled with the UASs) through an intuitive and natural interface that enhances the situation awareness of UASs operators. Independence from third party services, flexibility in terms of supported input/output devices, adaptability to other contexts and extensibility have been considered as priorities. This work has been conducted in the frame of Progetto Space4Agri supported by AQ-Regione Lombardia-CNR.