SUMMARY

This dissertation contains a multi-faceted study into the problem of autonomously landing a multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) onto a moving ground vehicle under challenging environmental conditions and functionally limiting constraints. The various components of a model of the mobile landing problem will be developed and described. Results from a simulation study performed with these models are then presented. The final main sections of the work cover the design, fabrication, and test results from two generations of mobile landing systems. These results constitute an addition to the state of the art in the literature on mobile landings because of the speed of landings achieved in a relatively unstructured outdoor environment. Many other solutions to autonomously landing on a moving ground vehicle have been developed in the literature, some of them to great functional effect. However, most of these solutions rely on global position systems (GPS), communications between vehicles, or visual targets requiring precise camera calibration based on current environmental conditions. These requirements stand in contrast to the reality that many of the most promising applications for teams of UAVs and ground vehicles lie in unstructured environments. In the search and rescue (SaR) and military contexts in particular, communications, GPS, and lighting conditions are far from a sure thing. Therefore, the UAVs documented in this work do not require GPS or communications with the ground vehicle, and their relative localization systems rely on infrared (IR) beacons. This allows robust landing operations, demonstrated on off-road surfaces and any lighting condition, including complete darkness. Zoom Link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98944921010