Salvador Vazquez: Ground Station for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Autopilot

Salvador Vazquez is majoring in Electrical Engineering at the University of California-Santa Cruz. He participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship -- Information Technology (Surf-IT), and worked in the autonomous systems lab under Gabriel Hugh Elkaim. The goal of the project he worked on was to create a ground station for a low cost unmanned aerial vehicle autopilot.

During the summer, Salvador used static Google maps on the ground station for the UAV autopilot to create a simple user interface. He had to make the maps move similar to the Google map interface, so users have an interface they are accustomed to. The ground station allows the user to click on the map and does the conversions from pixels to degrees for each waypoint added. Through this summer research program, funded by the NSF, Salvador was able to reach a new level of knowledge and help further the advancement of technology.