Control from laptop

I am trying to identify hardware/software that can accomplish what I need to do. I have a little prior experience with quad copters, but have never actually bought one myself.

I need an onboard controller that can do flight stability and GPS coordinate-based navigation. It sounds like the APM controller can do that – although some recommendations on which software to start with would be great. But I also think the APM controller can receive commands from a network or radio interface to a computer/phone/whatever. I would like to program that interface so that it will fly whatever mission I wanted to do without constant user feedback.

What I don’t know is where to start. Is there existing software I could download that would let me get close to this goal? Maybe there is example code, or an API? before I buy the hardware, I want to make sure that this is even possible. So any recommendations would be appreciated.

Thank you,
-Eric

did you have a look in viewforum.php?f=11 ?

You should probably start with reading the documentation here: copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/table-of-contents/