Presented actual aspects of the development of the control system of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the example of perspective. Because the current and future UAV oriented to implementation of a wide range of tasks, taking into account the use of several types of payload, in this paper discusses the general principles of construction of onboard control complex, in turn, a hardware implementation of the automatic control system has been implemented in the microcontroller Arduino platform and the Raspberry Pi. In addition, in the paper presents the most common and promising way to ensure the smooth and reliable communication of the command post with the UAV as well as to the ways of parry considered and abnormal situations. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2018.