Unmanned vehicles are primarily used for remote sensing applications. Access to real-time video from an Electro-Optic/Infrared (EO/IR) sensor is crucial to ensuring that mission objectives are consistently and effectively met. VCS-4586 includes an integrated video suite featuring:

• Support for analog video (NTSC, PAL)
• Support for digital video (MPEG-2 and H.264 with KLV metadata (MISB 0601.2), as defined in STANAG 4609)
• Software-based decoding for digital video eliminating the need for a dedicated video card
• Export of video and metadata to external C4I nodes (e.g. remote video terminal (RVT) applications)
• Configurable textual and graphical overlays indicating vehicle location and heading, sensor bearing and elevation, height above target and slant range and numerous other parameters

Live sensor and video data can be manipulated using built-in features that give the operator the ability to:

• Specify sensor stare-point by clicking on video display or map
• Toggle between EO, IR and EO/IR fused modes
• Dynamically control sensor zoom
• Operate sensor using a joystick
• Capture and save still video frames as images (JPG, TIFF, lossless NITF2.1 with metadata)
• Pause video and associated metadata in real-time
• Measure geographical distance and bearing between any two points on video display
• Use hotkeys to access commonly used functions
• Adjust video brightness, contrast, hue and saturation for viewing

In order to readily interface with a variety of sensor platforms, VCS-4586 supports several common sensor operation modes:

• Inertial (stare-point remains at a fixed coordinate and can be manually slewed)
• Point-at-Coordinates (stare-point remains fixed at designated coordinate)
• Heading hold (stare-point remains at a fixed heading and can be manually slewed)
• Autotrack (stare-point tracks the image at the center of sensor field of view)
• Rectangular- and strip-based wide area search patterns