Precision UAV Landing Control Based on Visual Detection

Precision landing is critical for rapid launching and recovering of unmanned aerial vehicles in ship-based scenarios and space-limited environments. The solution presented here uses a deep convolutional network based vision pipeline to detect the landing mark and estimate system state in real-time. The landing sequence is controlled by vehicle trajectory points using a linear predictive algorithm. The trajectory points are fed to a low level position controller and velocity controller. Both controllers demonstrate satisfactory performance and achieve <; 0.3-meter accuracy with the platform moving up to 80% of maximum UAV velocity.