QGroundControl

QGroundControl is the open-source ground control station maintained under the Dronecode Project, a Linux Foundation collaborative project. It handles vehicle setup, flying, and mission planning for any drone that uses the MAVLink protocol, mainly PX4 and ArduPilot autopilots. It supports multirotor, fixed-wing, and VTOL vehicles. It runs natively on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, and many field operators use it on tablets for that reason. For inspection and mapping work, Plan View has a Survey pattern tool. You can pick a known camera or define a custom one by sensor size and focal length, then set overlap, ground resolution, grid angle, and hover-and-capture, and turn on terrain following to keep a constant height over uneven ground. The tool also shows planned photo counts and area statistics. The software costs nothing. The code is dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and GPLv3, so companies can fork and rebrand it, and Auterion's commercial AMC product is one such fork. QGroundControl suits drone service providers, integrators, and developers who build on open autopilots and want one cross-platform tool for configuration and automated flights. Its main limitation is scope. It manages flights, not operations: it has no built-in fleet management, role-based access, audit logging, image processing, or AI defect detection. Teams need separate tools for photogrammetry and asset management, and there is no vendor support contract, only community forums.