Towards Autonomous UAV Landing Based on Infrared Beacons and Particle Filtering

TL;DR

This paper proposes an infrared beacon and particle filtering-based method for autonomous UAV landing on makeshift runways, especially useful when GPS signals are unavailable, by fusing visual and inertial data for robust position tracking.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining infrared beacons and particle filtering to enable UAV landings without GPS, capable of tracking even after engine shutdown.

Findings

Effective in simulated environments

Successful real-trajectory testing

Robust to GPS limitations

Abstract

Autonomous fixed-wing UAV landing based on differential GPS is now a mainstream providing reliable and precise landing. But the task still remains challenging when GPS availability is limited like for military UAVs. We discuss a solution of this problem based on computer vision and dot markings along stationary or makeshift runway. We focus our attempts on using infrared beacons along with narrow-band filter as promising way to mark any makeshift runway and utilize particle filtering to fuse both IMU and visual data. We believe that unlike many other vision-based methods this solution is capable of tracking UAV position up to engines stop. System overview, algorithm description and it's evaluation on synthesized sequence along real recorded trajectory is presented.