Abstract

Currently deployed unmanned rotorcraft rely on carefully preplanned missions and operate from prepared sites and thus avoid the need to perceive and react to the environment. Here we consider the problems of finding suitable but previously unmapped landing sites given general coordinates of the goal and planning collision free trajectories in real time to land at the “optimal” site. This requires accurate mapping, fast landing zone evaluation algorithms, and motion planning. We report here on the sensing, perception and motion planning integrated onto a full-scale helicopter that flies completely autonomously. We show results from 8 experiments for landing site selection and 5 runs at obstacles. These experiments have demonstrated the first autonomous full-scale helicopter that successfully selects its own landing sites and avoids obstacles.

Highlights

  • Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are common for high altitude surveillance, weapons designation, or communication relay missions

  • We report in detail on flight tests that have accomplished the first autonomous landing in previously unmapped terrain by a full-scale helicopter

  • After deciding on a landing zone, the system sets up an approach from the north and lands near the casualty

Read more

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are common for high altitude surveillance, weapons designation, or communication relay missions. In these missions fixed-wing aircraft are the most relevant technology since they have the largest endurance. A rotorcraft UAS should have the “common sense” to be safe even if directed along an approach that would nominally cause a collision or if directed to land on rough or sloped terrain. It routes itself to land at the chosen site, ensuring that there are no collisions with near terrain objects as it descents. Such a scenario requires two key capabilities: landing zone selection, and obstacle avoidance. We report in detail on flight tests that have accomplished the first autonomous landing in previously unmapped terrain by a full-scale helicopter

RELATED WORK
PERCEPTION AND SYSTEM DESIGN
OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE
Landing
Obstacle Avoidance
CONCLUSIONS
Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call