Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for the Landing of a Quadrotor on a Marine Surface Vehicle

The paper addresses the design of a control strategy for a quadrotor autonomous aerial vehicle to land on a target marine surface vehicle. In particular, a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control law that takes into account the marine vehicle trajectory and the sea state has been designed to let the quadrotor land on the target vehicle when this reaches a wave peak. The sea state has been modeled using monochromatic sinusoidal waves, and the maximum wave height and period are taken into account by the quadrotor control law to compute the position and the timing of the next vertical peak in the target vehicle trajectory. The results of numerical simulations performed in ROS/Gazebo environment are shown to validate the control strategy effectiveness. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.