Detection and Localization of Thin Vertical Board for UAV Perching

An autonomous vision-based landing system with a passively driven perching mechanism for a UAV is described in this paper. In our previous research, we developed a passively driven perching mechanism that can land on various shapes. The goal of this study was to achieve automatic perching on a thin vertical board using the passive mechanism. For autonomous perching, an RGB-D camera was used to detect and track a perching target and automatically control the flight of the UAV to the target position. The combination of RGB-D tracking system for thin vertical board and self-position estimation from another tracking camera mounted on the UAV enabled automatic perching. The results of the experiment using the passively driven perching mechanism and autonomous system verified that it is possible to land on objects such as road signs at heights, by using the integrated system for object detection and UAV control. In the experiment, the UAV was controlled to fly autonomously to the vicinity of the target and then perched on a 2 mm thick board.