Autonomous landing of a UAV on a moving target using vector field guidance approach

Abstract

In this thesis, new two dimensional vector field which can guide object to certain position with certain arrival angle. This vector field is generated from combination and transformation of existing vector field. Proposed vector field is expanded to three dimension in two ways. Each can be adopted to landing guidance of fixed wing aircraft and rotary wing aircraft. Furthermore, the generated vector field is characterized in that, even if the aircraft does not follow the field accurately due to disturbance, it can reach the aircraft vertically at a desired position without updating the field. When Combining this new vector field with the relative coordinate information makes it possible to arrive at the object at a constant angle of arrival, even in the presence of disturbance or moving the object. In order to verify this, the landing simulation was constructed based on the corrected relative position information by reflecting the camera attitude angle information to the existing pinhole camera model. According to the results of simulation, it is confirmed that the proposed vector field can guide an object to desired position with specific arrival angle under uniform wind, navigation error, time delay control, and target motion.