Autonomous UAV Target Tracking and Safe Landing on a Leveling Mobile Platform

Abstract

The demand for quadcopters capable of stably taking off from and landing on a mobile surface is rising in view of the increasing use of these aircrafts in the military and marine fields. Accordingly, a novel leveling mobile platform with a two-degree-of-freedom gimbal structure for landing a quadcopter safely on a moving target is designed in this work. The basis tracking and landing operation with a quadcopter and the leveling mobile platform are performed on global positioning system (GPS) and vision system. The combined system can track a moving target as well as control altitude and attitude using various sensors, such as GPS, inertial measurement unit (IMU) and LiDAR, mounted on the quadcopter. By utilizing vision sensors, a more precise landing control is achieved. The leveling platform was designed to maintain a level landing surface and assist in the stable landing of the quadcopter. This platform was fabricated because landing may be unsafe if the landing target is moving on an uneven surface. To verify the effectiveness of the above system, experiments were conducted to land a quadcopter on a target moving on level ground and sloping surfaces. When the leveling function was not implemented, the quadcopter frequently overturned while attempting to land. In contrast, when the leveling function was used, all landing attempts were successful.