Fly, Track, Land: Infrastructure-less Magnetic Localization for Heterogeneous UAV-UGV Teaming
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866915849112125440 |
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| author | Brunacci, Valerio Plozza, Davide De Angelis, Alessio Magno, Michele Polonelli, Tommaso |
| author_facet | Brunacci, Valerio Plozza, Davide De Angelis, Alessio Magno, Michele Polonelli, Tommaso |
| contents | We present a complete infrastructure-less magneto-inductive (MI) localization system enabling a lightweight UAV to autonomously hover, track, and land with centimeter precision on a mobile quadruped robot acting as a dynamic docking pad. This work advances the vision of heterogeneous robot collaboration, where ultra-lightweight flying robots serve as mobile perception agents for ground-based Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). By extending the sensing horizon and providing complementary viewpoints, the UAVs enhance exploration efficiency and improve the quality of data collection in large-scale, unknown environments. The proposed system aims to complements traditional localization modalities with a compact, embedded, and infrastructure-less magnetic sensing approach, providing accurate short-range relative positioning to bridge the gap between coarse navigation and precise UAV docking. A single lightweight receive coil and a fully embedded estimation pipeline on the UAV deliver 20 Hz relative pose estimates in the UGV's frame, achieving a 3D position root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 5 cm. The system uses real-time estimation and a warm-started solver to estimate the 3D position, which is then fused with inertial and optical-flow measurements in the onboard extended Kalman filter. Real-world experiments validate the effectiveness of the framework, demonstrating significant improvements in UAV--UGV teaming in infrastructure-less scenarios compared to state-of-the-art methods, requiring no external anchors or global positioning. In dynamic scenarios, the UAV tracks and docks with a moving UGV while maintaining a 7.2 cm RMSE and achieving successful autonomous landings. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_08926 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Fly, Track, Land: Infrastructure-less Magnetic Localization for Heterogeneous UAV-UGV Teaming Brunacci, Valerio Plozza, Davide De Angelis, Alessio Magno, Michele Polonelli, Tommaso Robotics We present a complete infrastructure-less magneto-inductive (MI) localization system enabling a lightweight UAV to autonomously hover, track, and land with centimeter precision on a mobile quadruped robot acting as a dynamic docking pad. This work advances the vision of heterogeneous robot collaboration, where ultra-lightweight flying robots serve as mobile perception agents for ground-based Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). By extending the sensing horizon and providing complementary viewpoints, the UAVs enhance exploration efficiency and improve the quality of data collection in large-scale, unknown environments. The proposed system aims to complements traditional localization modalities with a compact, embedded, and infrastructure-less magnetic sensing approach, providing accurate short-range relative positioning to bridge the gap between coarse navigation and precise UAV docking. A single lightweight receive coil and a fully embedded estimation pipeline on the UAV deliver 20 Hz relative pose estimates in the UGV's frame, achieving a 3D position root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 5 cm. The system uses real-time estimation and a warm-started solver to estimate the 3D position, which is then fused with inertial and optical-flow measurements in the onboard extended Kalman filter. Real-world experiments validate the effectiveness of the framework, demonstrating significant improvements in UAV--UGV teaming in infrastructure-less scenarios compared to state-of-the-art methods, requiring no external anchors or global positioning. In dynamic scenarios, the UAV tracks and docks with a moving UGV while maintaining a 7.2 cm RMSE and achieving successful autonomous landings. |
| title | Fly, Track, Land: Infrastructure-less Magnetic Localization for Heterogeneous UAV-UGV Teaming |
| topic | Robotics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08926 |