Autonomous landing on ground target of UAV by using image-based visual servo control

Abstract

This paper addresses the auto landing problem of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a single down-looking vertically camera on the ground target using image-based visual servo (IBVS) control. Observable features on a ground guidance cooperation mark flat are exploited to recognize and obtain the center pixel position of the mark, without the position and attitude estimation process, and direct compute flight control commands based on pixel level in image by control law, which all running on an onboard micro-processor. We exploited two control schemes include visual velocity landing control and VICON position landing control to compare the control effect. Experimental results are provided to illustrate and assess the performance of the proposed visual control strategy.