Method of pose estimation for UAV landing

Abstract

In order to achieve the goal of the autonomous landing of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a new method is put forward for using the monocular camera on board to provide the information, which is need for landing. It is not necessary to install additional equipment in the airport. The vision-based method only makes use of the two edge lines on both sides of the main runway and the front edge line of the airport without using the horizon. While the runway width is known, the method can produce the attitude and position parameters of landing. The results of the hardware-in-the-loop simulation show the proposed method has better accuracy and faster computation speed. OCIS codes: 040.1490, 080.1235, 080.2720, 200.4560. doi: 10.3788/COL201210.S20401. In recent years, the study on autonomous landing of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has being a research focus, especially based on vision. This approach has two attractive features. Firstly, video cameras/sensors are passive sensors; hence, they cannot be detected and artificially interfered with easily. Secondly, most UAVs are already equipped with video cameras (e.g., for ground reconnaissance); hence, vision-based navigation does not require much additional hardware or payload. Research on the key technology of vision-based navigation is the measurement of landing attitude and position of UAV using the runway images taken by the camera on UAV.