Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Automatic Take Off, Tracking and Landing of a Miniature UAV on a Moving Carrier Vehicle

  • Published:
Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We present a system consisting of a miniature unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a small carrier vehicle, in which the UAV is capable of autonomously starting from the moving ground vehicle, tracking it at a constant distance and landing on a platform on the carrier in motion. Our visual tracking approach differs from other methods by using low-cost, lightweight commodity consumer hardware. As main sensor we use a Wii remote infrared (IR) camera, which allows robust tracking of a pattern of IR lights in conditions without direct sunlight. The system does not need to communicate with the ground vehicle and works with an onboard 8-bit microcontroller. Nevertheless the position and orientation relative to the IR pattern is estimated at a frequency of approximately 50 Hz. This enables the UAV to fly fully autonomously, performing flight control, self-stabilisation and visual tracking of the ground vehicle. We present experiments in which our UAV performs autonomous flights with a moving ground carrier describing a circular path and where the carrier is rotating. The system provides small errors and allows for safe, autonomous indoor flights.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bouabdallah, S., Murrieri, P., Siegwart, R.: Design and control of an indoor micro quadrotor. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2004)

  2. Bouabdallah, S., Noth, A., Siegwart, R.: PID vs LQ control techniques applied to an indoor micro quadrotor. In: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 2451–2456 (2004)

  3. Fischler, M.A., Bolles, R.C.: Random sample consensus: a paradigm for model fitting with applications to image analysis and automated cartography. Commun. ACM 24(6), 381–395 (1981). doi:10.1145/358669.358692

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Frew, E., Mcgee, T., Kim, Z., Xiao, X., Jackson, S., Morimoto, M., Rathinam, S., Padial, J., Sengupta, R.: Vision-based road-following using a small autonomous aircraft. In: IEEE Aerospace Conference, vol. 5, pp. 3006–3015 (2004)

  5. Guenard, N., Hamel, T.: A practical visual servo control for an unmanned aerial vehicle. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 1342–1348 (2007)

  6. Gurdan, D., Stumpf, J., Achtelik, M., Doth, K.M., Hirzinger, G., Rus, D.: Energy-efficient autonomous four-rotor flying robot controlled at 1 kHz. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 361–366. Roma, Italy (2007)

  7. Hartley, R.I., Zisserman, A.: Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press (2004)

  8. Hay, S., Newman, J., Harle, R.: Optical tracking using commodity hardware. In: 7th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), pp. 159–160 (2008)

  9. Herisse, B., Russotto, F.X., Hamel, T., Mahony, R.E.: Hovering flight and vertical landing control of a VTOL unmanned aerial vehicle using optical flow. In: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 801–806 (2008)

  10. Kemp, C.: Visual control of a miniature quad-rotor helicopter. Ph.D. thesis, Churchill College, University of Cambridge (2006)

  11. Mak, L.C., Furukawa, T.: A 6 DoF visual tracking system for a miniature helicopter. In: 2nd International Conference on Sensing Technology (ICST), pp. 32–37 (2007)

  12. Nordberg, K., Doherty, P., Farnebäck, G., Forssén, P.E., Granlund, G., Moe, A., Wiklund, J.: Vision for a UAV helicopter. In: International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Workshop on Aerial Robotics. Lausanne, Switzerland (2002)

  13. Roberts, J., Corke, P., Buskey, G.: Low-cost flight control system for a small autonomous helicopter. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 546–551. Taipai, Taiwan (2003)

  14. Saripalli, S., Montgomery, J.F., Sukhatme, G.S.: Vision-based autonomous landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 2799–2804. Washington, DC, USA (2002)

  15. Schou, T., Gardner, H.J.: A Wii remote, a game engine, five sensor bars and a virtual reality theatre. In: OZCHI ’07: Proceedings of the 2007 Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction: Design, Activities, Artifacts And Environments, pp. 231–234. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Shakernia, O., Ma, Y., John, T., Sastry, K.S.: Landing an unmanned air vehicle: vision based motion estimation and nonlinear control. Asian J. Control 1, 128–145 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Sharp, C.S., Shakernia, O., Sastry, S.S.: A vision system for landing an unmanned aerial vehicle. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seoul, Korea, pp. 1720–1727 (2001)

  18. Sreedharan, S., Zurita, E.S., Plimmer, B.: 3d input for 3d worlds. In: OZCHI ’07: Proceedings of the 2007 Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction: Design, Activities, Artifacts And Environments, pp. 227–230. ACM, New York, NY, USA (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Valavanis, K.P. (ed.): Advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. State of the Art and the Road to Autonomy. Springer (2007)

  20. Watanabe, K., Iwatani, Y., Nonaka, K., Hashimoto, K.: A visual-servo-based assistant system for unmanned helicopter control. In: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 822–827 (2008)

  21. Wenzel, K.E., Zell, A.: Automatic take off, hovering and landing control for miniature helicopters with low-cost onboard hardware. In: Proceedings of AMS’09, Autonome Mobile Systeme 2009, pp. 73–80. Karlsruhe, Germany (2009)

  22. Wenzel, K.E., Zell, A.: Low-cost visual tracking of a landing place and hovering flight control with a microcontroller. J. Intell. Robot. Syst. 57(1-4), 297–311 (2009). doi:10.1007/s10846-009-9355-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Tübingen, Sand 1, 72076, Tübingen, Germany

    Karl Engelbert Wenzel, Andreas Masselli & Andreas Zell

Authors
  1. Karl Engelbert Wenzel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Andreas Masselli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Andreas Zell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karl Engelbert Wenzel.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Wenzel, K.E., Masselli, A. & Zell, A. Automatic Take Off, Tracking and Landing of a Miniature UAV on a Moving Carrier Vehicle. J Intell Robot Syst 61, 221–238 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-010-9473-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-010-9473-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation