Drone-based video streaming with UgCS

 

Contents

• Setting up in-field video observer
  • DJI drones: Mavic Series, Matrice Series, Phantoms, Inspires
  • Parrot: ANAFI, ANAFI Thermal, ANAFI USA
  • Generic Ardupilot/Px4-based drones
• Streaming from the field to a video monitoring room
• Integration with VMS
  • Milestone
  • Luxriot
• Working in the VPN
• MISB compatibility

UgCS provides low latency, reliable video live stream from drones in the field to any location (HQ/office/operations center) via WiFi/LTE. UgCS Video subsystem is created according to MISB standard for video metadata, which supports GPS coordinates, altitude, camera attitude information as well as video recording.

 

Drone-based video surveillance may serve several purposes:

• provide high-quality video feed for the in-field video observer
• stream video from the field to the video monitoring room

Setting up in-field video observer

It is very common for a drone pilot to be focused on piloting and thus unable to monitor video feed. In such cases, a separate video observer can perform the monitoring. One advantage of such a setup is that the video observer can stay in a car or a tent protected from the weather and still perform very accurate video analysis while the drone is in the air.

Setting up in-field video observer can be especially helpful for:

• industrial inspection of vertical walls, dams, powerlines, bridges
• search and rescue operations

Drone-based video streaming from DJI drones: Mavic series, Matrice series, Phantom, Inspire

Figure 1. UgCS ENTERPRISE video streaming setup with DJI drones.

  

Video streaming setup with DJI drones consists of the following components (Figure 1):

• Android tablet with UgCS software for DJI
• Windows computer with UgCS ENTERPRISE with the following components:
  • UgCS from the main UgCS installer
  • UgCS Video Server and UgCS Video Player from UgCS Video installer

If the Android mobile device and Windows computer are in the same Wi-Fi network, then these components will connect automatically. In some cases, manual configuration may be needed.

To view the video footage, use UgCS Video Player. 

Drone-based video streaming from Parrot drones: ANAFI, ANAFI Thermal, ANAFI USA

Figure 2. UgCS ENTERPRISE video streaming setup with Parrot ANAFI drones.

 

For the Parrot ANAFI series, all flight planning and control activities are performed via a laptop with UgCS.

To show a video feed, the pilots have to connect the remote control to the laptop via a USB cable. To capture the feed, the pilot has to install UgCS Video Transmitter from the UgCS installer. Although this video transmitter already provides video preview, we recommend that a second computer is set up for the observer (Figure 2).

The observer's computer needs two components: UgCS Video Server and UgCS Video Player from UgCS Video installer.

If the pilot and the observer computers are in the same Wi-Fi network, then the UgCS Transmitter application will automatically connect to the second laptop with Video Server and Video Player.

To view the video stream, use UgCS Video Player.

Drone-based video streaming from generic Ardupilot/Px4-based drones

Drones that lack the standard RC video transmission typically use third-party video links. Such video links can be connected to a laptop over the USB and treated as an ordinary web camera. The UgCS Video Transmitter can automatically detect them as video sources and transmit the content to the UgCS Video Server.

Additionally, UgCS Transmitter can use RTSP streams as a source. The rest of the setup is the same as that for the Parrot series.

Streaming from the field to a video monitoring room

Drone-based video streaming with UgCS ENTERPRISE can be deployed in distributed configuration with pilots in the field and observers in a video monitoring room (Figure 3).

Figure 3. UgCS ENTERPRISE video streaming from the drone in the field to video monitoring room

 

UgCS Video server must be launched in the video monitoring room on a computer with a public IP address. To stream video from the field, the pilot should connect the applications to the UgCS Video server:

• With DJI drones, the pilot configures UgCS for DJI Android application
• With Parrot and Generic Ardupilot/Px4 drones with custom video link, pilot configures UgCS Video Transmitter Windows application

To view video footage, use UgCS Video Player or configure integration with VMS.

Integration with VMS

Milestone

UgCS Video Server can display the RTSP link for each video feed. The RTSP link can be copied from the video viewer in UgCS Video Player and added to VMS as a generic camera.

 

Luxriot

UgCS Video Server can display the RTSP link for each video feed. The RTSP link can be copied from the video viewer in UgCS Video Player and added to VMS as a generic camera.

 

With other VMS systems, the approach will be similar.

Working within a VPN

All UgCS components can work within a VPN. VPN can significantly enhance the security of data transmitted from the field to the office.

MISB compatibility

The system is built based on the MISB standard. This standard defines the media streaming format, which supports metadata streaming among video and audio streams. The transport stream is based on the MPEG-TS standard, while the video stream is encoded by H.264 codec, and the Metadata stream is encoded by the KLV codec (Figure 4). 

Figure 4. Setup of drone-based video stream with UgCS

 

The video server is used for multiplexing streams between several clients, video recording, etc. Stream format input and output are identical, although streaming protocol may differ (see below). Therefore, this can be an optional component to play the stream directly from the source. However, the audience will be limited to one client in such a case (if not using UDP multicast).

The stream can be played with most modern media players (like VLC), but the KLV stream with metadata will not be shown with such players. The video can also be played with any MISB-compliant player, which is usually integrated into some GIS so that the video is instantly connected with a location on a map.

The video server supports MPEG-TS with UDP-based transport.

A subset of "ST 0601.17 UAS Datalink Local Set" metadata is supported.

 

Useful links

• UgCS Support Team
• UgCS Manuals and documentation