Vision-based Quadrotor Landing Tests on a Large Stochastic Platform under Degraded Visibility

Abstract:
This paper develops and tests a feature-based autonomous landing system for vertical lift aircraft on stochastically moving ship decks, under degraded visual conditions. The system is tested with a custom-built quadrotor on a six-degree-of-freedom 1.5-ton Stewart platform reproducing stochastic motions up to Sea State typical of DDG-51-class ships. Experiments began with nominal conditions, followed by a stepwise degradation of deck features through occlusion, low illumination, water distortion, and glare. The vision algorithm tracked the platform and achieved landing across all scenarios, with tracking errors of up to 14% of the vehicle footprint, and up to 2.2° of pitch and roll. Overall, it demonstrated the ability to land in a GPS/Lidar-denied, difficult environment with on-board vision alone, achieving deterministic, repeatable results.

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