Development of a Plug-and-Play Infrared Landing System for Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Precise landing of multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in confined, GPS-denied and vision-compromised environments presents a challenge to common autopilot systems. In this work we outline an autonomous infrared (IR) landing system using a ground-based IR radiator, UAV-mounted IR camera, and image processing computer. Previous work has focused on UAV-mounted IR sources for UAV localization, or systems using multiple distributed ground-based IR sources to estimate UAV pose. We experimented with the use of a single ground-based IR radiator to determine the UAV's relative location in three-dimensional space. The outcome of our research significantly simplifies the landing zone setup by requiring only a single IR source, and increases operational flexibility, as the vision-based system adapts to changes in landing zone position. The usefulness of our system is especially demonstrated in vision-compromised applications such as nighttime operations, or in smoky environments observed during forest fires. We also evaluated a high-power IR radiator for future research in the field of outdoor autonomous point-to-point navigation between IR sources where GPS is unavailable.