Evaluation of Fully Autonomous Shipboard Operations at the Maneuvering and Seakeeping Basin

Abstract:
This paper presents the results of a flight test effort examining fully autonomous shipboard operations for small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Experiments were conducted at the Maneuvering and Seakeeping Basin (MASK) located at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division using custom-built quadrotor UAVs landing on an unmanned surface vessel (USV). These tests build upon previous ship landing algorithm testing in order to expand the envelope of operations and be more representative of a real-world mission. Several new flight modes were implemented, including takeoff and pattern flying, and a finite state machine was developed to allow smooth and autonomous transition between the different flight modes. The results from testing show smoothly executed missions both in still water and in the presence of waves. However, it was found that the initial conditions for the command filters in the position controller needed to be carefully selected. Without the correct initial conditions, discontinuities in the commands were seen when switching between modes that used the command filters and modes that bypassed them. The results of this work will help bridge the gap between ship landing-specific research and real-world applications encompassing multiple flight modes.

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