Long-Duration Autonomy for Small Rotorcraft UAS including Recharging

TL;DR

This paper presents a fully autonomous small rotorcraft UAS capable of long-duration missions through autonomous operation and automated recharging, demonstrated with up to 11 hours of continuous flight.

Contribution

It introduces a novel autonomous rotorcraft system with vision-based precision landing and emergency response, enabling long-term surveillance without human intervention.

Findings

Achieved up to 11 hours of autonomous flight in indoor and outdoor tests.

Demonstrated reliable vision-based landing on recharging stations.

Showcased fully autonomous long-duration surveillance capabilities.

Abstract

Many unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance and monitoring applications require observations at precise locations over long periods of time, ideally days or weeks at a time (e.g. ecosystem monitoring), which has been impractical due to limited endurance and the requirement of humans in the loop for operation. To overcome these limitations, we propose a fully autonomous small rotorcraft UAS that is capable of performing repeated sorties for long-term observation missions without any human intervention. We address two key technologies that are critical for such a system: full platform autonomy including emergency response to enable mission execution independently from human operators, and the ability of vision-based precision landing on a recharging station for automated energy replenishment. Experimental results of up to 11 hours of fully autonomous operation in indoor and outdoor environments illustrate the capability of our system.