Visual Servoing Approach for Autonomous UAV Landing on a Moving Vehicle

We present a method to autonomously land an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on a moving vehicle with a circular (or elliptical) pattern on the top. A visual servoing controller approaches the ground vehicle using velocity commands calculated directly in image space. The control laws generate velocity commands in all three dimensions, eliminating the need for a separate height controller. The method has shown the ability to approach and land on the moving deck in simulation, indoor and outdoor environments, and compared to the other available methods, it has provided the fastest landing approach. It does not rely on additional external setup, such as RTK, motion capture system, ground station, offboard processing, or communication with the vehicle, and it requires only a minimal set of hardware and localization sensors. The videos and source codes can be accessed from http://theairlab.org/landing-on-vehicle.