Vision-based autonomous landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle

We present the design and implementation of a real-time, vision-based landing algorithm for an autonomous helicopter. The helicopter is required to navigate from an initial position to a final position in a partially known environment based on GPS and vision, locate a landing target (a helipad of a known shape) and land on it. We use vision for precise target detection and recognition. The helicopter updates its landing target parameters based on vision and uses an on board behavior-based controller to follow a path to the landing site. We present results from flight trials in the field which demonstrate that our detection, recognition and control algorithms are accurate and repeatable.