Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle 3D-Model-Based Tracking for Autonomous Landing

COVER STORY: Most accidents and incidents with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) occur during take-off or landing. Reducing human intervention in these operations increases system reliability and makes using qualified and trained pilots unnecessary. When using small-size UAVs, the take-off can be easily performed by hand, so the focus of this research was on the landing maneuver. The vast increase in the available computational capability has allowed for the application of Particle-Filter (PF)-based approaches for monocular 3D-model-based tracking.

Using directional statistics and pose optimization, Nuno Pessanha Santos et al. overcame some of the implementation's limitations, increasing the filter's convergence capability and decreasing the obtained error. The results showed that the obtained pose estimation error is compatible with the automatic landing requirements.

All articles in Drones (ISSN 2504-446X) Vol 7, Issue 4, are now freely available to access, read and download.

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