Autonomous tracking and landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle on a ground vehicle in rough terrain

Collaborative exploration using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) has become increasingly popular in academia over the past decade. This study addresses the task of autonomously landing a UAV on a ground vehicle in rough terrain, which is fundamental, yet challenging, for UAV-UGV collaborative exploration. The method proposed in this paper estimates the relative pose and velocity between UAV and UGV and uses model predictive control for UAV trajectory planning while considering the field of view of camera onboard the UAV. Through a simulation study, we confirmed that the proposed method enables a UAV to accurately track the UGV traversing in rough terrain, and to land on it with 100% success rate at the UGV velocity of 1.0 m/s and still 50% at 3.0 m/s.