Multiple Camera Based Real-Time Locating System for Unmanned Air Vehicle

A landing system is an essential part of an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to perform autonomous aviation missions. Such a system requires a landing mechanism and a procedure that will allow a safe return to a selected landing position when the mission tasks are finished. In this paper the authors present a concept and first results of a developed system that is connected to a drone which allows automatic landing of a vehicle based on image processing of images captured in real-time by on-board cameras. The system consists of three different cameras: a visible light camera, an infrared camera and a thermal imaging camera. Preliminary results and comparison of developed image processing algorithms for different cameras and two different landing markers are also presented here.