A drone ground control station is the screen and set of controls from which an operator plans a drone's flight and watches it. It is also called a GCS. It can be a laptop, a tablet or a rack in a control room. It connects to the drone by radio.
The operator does three jobs here. First, the operator draws the route on a digital map and sets the height and speed. Second, the operator watches the drone's position, battery and camera video during the flight. Third, the operator can change the route or call the drone back. If the radio link breaks, most drones are set to fly back to the place where they took off. The operator chooses this setting before the flight.
A hand-held remote control flies one drone while the pilot watches it. A ground control station does more. It holds the planned route and the map, and it saves a log of the flight. The log is used to prepare an inspection report and, after an accident, to find out what went wrong.
A single station can control a drone in a box or a swarm. Commands travel over radio, often a mesh or tactical radio. A similar screen on the ground is used to watch an eVTOL air taxi that flies with no pilot on board. eVTOL stands for electric vertical take-off and landing.
In India, the software also keeps the drone inside the rules. The government has divided the airspace into green, yellow and red zones. Flying in a green zone, up to 120 metres above the ground, needs no permission. A yellow zone needs permission from air traffic control. In a red zone, only the central government can permit a flight. Permissions are asked for on the government's Digital Sky platform. Consider a surveyor in Pune who draws a route that crosses a yellow zone near an airport. The software marks the route in yellow and will not let the flight start until the permission is entered.