Giuri, Pietro (Politecnico di Milano), Marini Cossetti, Adriano (Politecnico di Milano), Giurato, Mattia (Politecnico Di Milano), Invernizzi, Davide (Politecnico di Milano), Lovera, Marco (Politecnico di Milano)

Air-To-Air Automatic Landing for Multirotor UAVs

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Multirotor UAVs" (ThA1), Thursday, April 4, 2019, 15:30−16:00, Carassa-Dadda

5th CEAS Conference on Guidance, Navigation and Control, April 3-5, 2019, Milano, Italy

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 19, 2024

Abstract

Nowadays, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are continuing to enlarge their market share and the related research activities are growing exponentially. In particular, the interaction between two or more vehicles during flight (e.g., formation flight and refuelling) are getting more and more attention. When dealing with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, the problem of air-to-air refuelling can arise when undertaking long range flights. In the military field, Air-to- Air Automatic Refuelling (AAAR) involving fixed-wing drones is object of studies and research activities. Also small UAVs suffer from low endurance problems, since the overwhelming majority of them has an electric propulsion system. A possibility to extend the range of UAV missions could be to have a carrier drone, reasonably a fixed-wing one, with several lightweight multirotors aboard, which can take-off from and land on it. The work conducted within this project is focused on the implementation of two nonlinear time-optimal guidance laws to obtain an air-to-air automatic landing of a small quadcopter on a bigger octocopter as a carrier. Eventually, the proposed guidance laws are validated through experimental activities.