Beyond line of sight control of small unmanned aerial vehicles using a synthetic environment to augment first person video

This paper is a summary of efforts to develop alternative methods to control small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)1 in manual mode while at Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) range. While it is true that the majority of the UAV airborne activities will be in autonomous mode (i.e. using an autopilot) this may not always be the case, especially if there is a failure of the autopilot or need for an emergency manual override maneuver. This requirement for an emergency manual back-up mode during all flight stages remains in proposed UAV regulations being defined in the U.S., Canada and Europe. This paper proposes a possible manual pilot console using a combination of an extended-range First Person View (FPV) video augmented by a synthetic simulation environment. Practical field testing of the various elements which make up this system is presented.