Auto Landing Sequence for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle at a Fixed Point

Over the last decade the invention of various sensor technology have bolstered interest in the development of robust unmanned aircraft and also enhanced their capabilities. While manual landing of unmanned aircraft can be strenuous for the pilot, auto landing system alleviates pilot discomfort during landing. With the help of auto landing system an unmanned aircraft will be able to land on its own at a fixed point, along a predefined slope, from a predetermined height when the pilot commands it to do so. The landing sequence will auto initiate if the connection between the pilot and aircraft is lost. The system developed uses global positioning system and solid geometry to orient the aircraft to a suitable point in space so that it can start it's descend. An algorithm was developed using MATLAB (R) through which several slopes can be plotted. These slopes are the possible descend paths for the aircraft. The aircraft when commanded to land will compare its position with each slope's initial points, choose the nearest point and head to that point for descend. This system does not require any ground based support system such as the use of marker beacons, glide slope antenna or localizer making it cheaper and easy to implement.