A Vision-Based Automatic Landing Method

For Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Name: Guided by:

Sahana Sridhar Mrs.Shobha.K
1SG06EC064 Mrs.Padmavathi.H

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Introduction

• A system for small-size, fixed-wing unmanned aerial

vehicles (UAV’s).

• Based on vision in front of the vehicle.

• Visual servoing algorithm is used to improve accuracy

of the landing

• Color- and moment-based target detection.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Manual landing

• Landing is the most accident-prone stage

airplanes.

• Pilot obtains visual info by

 naked eyes
 live images taken by onboard cameras.

• Piloting outside needs lot of practice.

• Nearly 70% of mishaps and 50%

of fixed-wing UAVs such as Hunter and
Pioneer suffer accidents during landing.
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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Vision-based Automatic landing

• A camera and a vision processing unit onboard.

• Detects the runway or other visual markers.

• Guide the vehicle to the touchdown point with good accuracy.

• Automatic landing systems control velocity of UAV’s more

accurately.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)

• UAVs fly without onboard pilots.

• They have become increasingly popular in military

operations.

• UAVs use energy-absorption technique.

• These are simple and they use high rate

of survivability.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

System Description

• Proposed landing system consists of three

major components:
 Inflated dome as a visual marker,
 A vision processing unit,
 Flight controller using visual servoing algorithm.

• Vision system is integrated with an MEMS based inertial

measurement unit (IMU).
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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Description on the proposed approach

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Airframe and Avionics

• In this research we make use of BWB-based UAV’s.

• BWB has only 2 control surfaces at the trailing edge know as

elevons.

• The fuselage houses the flight computer, IMU, battery and radio
receiver, also vehicle has a DC motor.

•The vehicle is resistant to shocks and crashes.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Blended-wing body (BWB) UAV Test bed

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 Avionics hardware architecture

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Landing equipment
• An arresting device is needed.

We propose a dome-shaped air bag.

• The dome is constructed with sturdy nylon of red color.

• The vehicle would simply fly into the dome at low speed with
a reasonable incident angle.

• Dome serves as visual cue and recovery net is responsible for

arresting the vehicle.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Vision Algorithms
The proposed vision algorithm consists of:
A color-based detection,
A moment-based detection, and
Visual servoing.

Proposed landing dome and recovery net

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Color-based target detection

• Color can provide an efficient vision.

• It can identify the target color regions with faster speeds.
• Good results are obtained under good lighting conditions.
• The dome’s color is the strongest visual cue.
• By making use of the moment invariant, specific target can be
found.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Moment based target detection:

• Multiple red objects are found by color based detection.
• Now it is required to determine whether the object is the landing dome or not.
• We use Hu’s method for high rate-detection for visual-based landing.
Four image moments are used for detection
Hu’s moment approach is applied to various red objects seen from space.

Roof Road sign Automobile Landing Dome

Hu’s moment 1 0.48560 0.20463 0.27423 0.21429
Hu’s moment 2 0.18327 0.00071 0.04572 0.01806
Hu’s moment 3 0.01701 0.00009 0.00193 0.00106
Hu’s moment 4 0.00911 0.00028 0.00098 0.000

Hu’s moment value of various shapes

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Visual servoing:

• Is a method to control a robot using computer vision.

• Can be applied to the fixed-wing UAV.
• Landing dome from the center of the image represents the heading
and pitch deviation.
• When the heading and pitch angle errors are zero the vehicle flies
directly to the landing dome.
• The heading and pitch angle deviations are sent to the heading and
pitch angle controllers.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Visual servoing scheme:

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs
Sequence of images during landing to dome

Fig.1 Fig. 2

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Sequence of images during landing to the recovery net

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

Conclusion
• The domes distinctive color and shape provides a visual cue to
vision system without any mistakes.
• The vision algorithm detects the landing dome.

• Navigation sensors cannot provide accurate solutions, visual

servoing is implemented.
• The idea shows that the system is a viable approach for landing.

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 Automatic landing method for fixed wing UAVs

References:

• www.wikipedia.org

• http://ieeeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?
tp=&arnumber=1057692

• Intelligent robots and systems, 2007, IROS 2007.

IEEE/RSJ international conference on.

• www.springerlink.com/index/80660XH9678W
1810

• www.sciencedirect.com

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 Thank you!

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