[001sky]

Looks pretty grey

"There are already hobbyists that operate "drones" by any reasonable definition. The term in the hobby is "FPV" (First Person View) - you install a camera and a transmitter on your aircraft and pilot it from a first-person perspective using a monitor on the ground. The radios on these operate by line-of-sight, but the range is far beyond visual range. You can find plenty of videos on Youtube just searching for "fpv radio control" or variations thereof. Operation of these for recreational purposes is currently unrestricted in the US. This may also change."

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=673706

[toomuchtodo]

I'm interested in controlled drones not by radio control, but with waypoints, and telemetry provided over LTE. Further investigation required!

[commandar]

Very much possible. Ardupilot is one of the more full-featured open source packages, but there are simpler autopilots out there as well. It's pretty common practice to at the very least have a GPS based "return to launch" system on long-range FPV craft as a failsafe for the connection to the ground station being dropped.

http://ardupilot.com/

[bnzelener]

We loooove ArduPilot. Using ArduPlane and ArduCopter (firmware versions of ArduPilot) as the primary platform for our LTE-Telem box.

The current software for configuring ArduPilot boards has tremendous depth, but I think the UI could use some work. Especially for non-hobbyist users.

[bnzelener]

A friend and I are working on this verbatim! Building an iOS interface for controlling the drone in-flight and planning missions, and a little "black box" that will connect to the autopilot computer and send telem data over LTE. We'll post on DIYDrones and FPVLab once it's ready for testers.

[toomuchtodo]

Brilliant!