Using DDS in UAV Control Stations

Describes the devekopment of UAV Control Station by Raytheon:

• The control stations provide command and control of an unmanned air vehicle (UAV)
• A common control station controls more than one type of UAV
• A control station is made up of a set of service
• Services defined by the Unmanned Systems (UxS) Control Segment (UCS) Architecture standard. Some common to all vehicles and some unique to a single vehicle

UAV Control Systems belong to a class of systems that require:

• The highest levels of performance, scalability, reliability and security
• A modular open systems architecture to minimize integration and foster reuse  
• Rapid reconfiguration to meet evolving mission requirements

The UAV Control System was developed using the DDS databus as the connectivity framework. Some of the key benefits derived from using DDS were:

• DDS Discovery allows for the configuration to change for each vehicle
• The Publish/Subscribe model decouples services allowing for different message sequences for each vehicle
• DDS Partitions enable multiple vehicles by separating the software for each vehicle.
• DDS Domains allow for separating flight critical software
• DDS Secure protects the domain from malignant services

The presentation concludes with the reasons DDS was found to be the best connectivity standard for mission-critical systems.