A Time and Place to Land: Online Learning-Based Distributed MPC for Multirotor Landing on Surface Vessel in Waves

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Stephenson, Jess, Stewart, William S., Greeff, Melissa
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866909370379403264
author Stephenson, Jess
Stewart, William S.
Greeff, Melissa
author_facet Stephenson, Jess
Stewart, William S.
Greeff, Melissa
contents Landing a multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) extends the operational range and offers recharging capabilities for maritime and limnology applications, such as search-and-rescue and environmental monitoring. However, autonomous UAV landings on USVs are challenging due to the unpredictable tilt and motion of the vessel caused by waves. This movement introduces spatial and temporal uncertainties, complicating safe, precise landings. Existing autonomous landing techniques on unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) rely on shared state information, often causing time delays due to communication limits. This paper introduces a learning-based distributed Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework for autonomous UAV landings on USVs in wave-like conditions. Each vehicle's MPC optimizes for an artificial goal and input, sharing only the goal with the other vehicle. These goals are penalized by coupling and platform tilt costs, learned as a Gaussian Process (GP). We validate our framework in comprehensive indoor experiments using a custom-designed platform attached to a UGV to simulate USV tilting motion. Our approach achieves a 53% increase in landing success compared to an approach that neglects the impact of tilt motion on landing.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_21674
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Time and Place to Land: Online Learning-Based Distributed MPC for Multirotor Landing on Surface Vessel in Waves
Stephenson, Jess
Stewart, William S.
Greeff, Melissa
Robotics
Landing a multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) extends the operational range and offers recharging capabilities for maritime and limnology applications, such as search-and-rescue and environmental monitoring. However, autonomous UAV landings on USVs are challenging due to the unpredictable tilt and motion of the vessel caused by waves. This movement introduces spatial and temporal uncertainties, complicating safe, precise landings. Existing autonomous landing techniques on unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) rely on shared state information, often causing time delays due to communication limits. This paper introduces a learning-based distributed Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework for autonomous UAV landings on USVs in wave-like conditions. Each vehicle's MPC optimizes for an artificial goal and input, sharing only the goal with the other vehicle. These goals are penalized by coupling and platform tilt costs, learned as a Gaussian Process (GP). We validate our framework in comprehensive indoor experiments using a custom-designed platform attached to a UGV to simulate USV tilting motion. Our approach achieves a 53% increase in landing success compared to an approach that neglects the impact of tilt motion on landing.
title A Time and Place to Land: Online Learning-Based Distributed MPC for Multirotor Landing on Surface Vessel in Waves
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.21674