Autonomous UAV Landing on a Moving Vessel: Localization Challenges and Implementation Framework

The number of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications is growing tremendously. The most critical ones are operations in use cases such as natural disasters, and search and rescue activities. Many of these operations are performed on water scenarios. A standalone niche covering autonomous UAV operation is thus becoming increasingly important. One of the crucial parts of mentioned operations is a technology capable to land an autonomous UAV on a moving surface vessel. This approach could not be entirely possible without precise UAV positioning. However, conventional strategies that rely on satellite localization may not always be reliable, due to scenario specifics. Therefore, the development of an independent precise landing technology is essential. In this paper, we developed the localization and landing system based on Gauss-Newton’s method, which allows to achieve the required localization accuracy. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.