This paper provides an overview of a micro-UAV computational
platform and its development process. The target application of our
micro-UAV is surveillance of open-cut mining sites containing difficult
terrain and wind conditions. This is why it is essential that
the platform integrates aircraft control and motion planning in
wind. We have chosen motion planning based on RRT since it is
one of the most promising methods. We also have overcome the
main computational difficulty with RRT in real time path planning
by employing reduced forward aircraft model, which proved to be
adequate for precision control. The development of our platform is
incremental with FPGA hardware replacing parts of microcontroller
based implementation previously tested in flight. All hardware
modules are tested as hardware in the simulation loop
before transferring to the flying platform.