Toward Increased Airspace Safety: Quadrotor Guidance for Targeting Aerial Objects

TL;DR

This paper presents an autonomous quadrotor guidance system for targeting aerial objects using monocular camera data, inspired by missile guidance, to enhance airspace safety by effectively intercepting semi-stationary and moving targets.

Contribution

It introduces an optimal guidance method for quadrotors that operates with minimal target information, inspired by missile guidance literature, and demonstrates its effectiveness in real-world and competition scenarios.

Findings

High first-pass hit success rate achieved

Effective pursuit duration demonstrated

Simple line-of-sight guidance proved effective in competition

Abstract

As the market for commercially available unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) booms, there is an increasing number of small, teleoperated or autonomous aircraft found in protected or sensitive airspace. Existing solutions for removal of these aircraft are either military-grade and too disruptive for domestic use, or compose of cumbersomely teleoperated counter-UAV vehicles that have proven ineffective in high-profile domestic cases. In this work, we examine the use of a quadrotor for autonomously targeting semi-stationary and moving aerial objects with little or no prior knowledge of the target's flight characteristics. Guidance and control commands are generated with information just from an onboard monocular camera. We draw inspiration from literature in missile guidance, and demonstrate an optimal guidance method implemented on a quadrotor but not usable by missiles. Results are presented for first-pass hit success and pursuit duration with various methods. Finally, we cover the CMU Team Tartan entry in the MBZIRC 2020 Challenge 1 competition, demonstrating the effectiveness of simple line-of-sight guidance methods in a structured competition setting.