Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
DOI 10.1007/s10846-017-0475-z
Received: 14 September 2016 / Accepted: 5 January 2017 / Published online: 26 January 2017
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017
Abstract Unmanned stratospheric aircraft capable of significantly reduces the system’s operational avail-
staying aloft for long periods of time have become a ability. To address these drawbacks a novel landing
topic of interest in the past years. Several problems are system is proposed in this paper. The landing gear
still to be solved to allow for a profitable commercial can be removed from the aircraft and a ground-based
use of such aircraft. The inherent lightweight design mobile landing platform is introduced. The main tech-
leads to fragile structures with low payload capacities nical challenges consist in the precise relative state
and a high wind sensitivity. The weather dependence estimation and cooperative control of the involved
vehicles. A reliable simulation model of the overall
system was developed and a number of simulation
experiments performed before the actual landing was
T. Muskardin () · G. Balmer · S. Wlach · M. Laiacker · attempted with an experimental system setup. Mul-
K. Kondak tiple successful landing experiments demonstrate the
German Aerospace Center DLR, Institute of Robotics
and Mechatronics, Muenchener Str. 20, 802234 Wessling, validity of the proposed system.
Germany
e-mail: tin.muskardin@dlr.de Keywords Aerial robotics · Cooperative control ·
G. Balmer UAV · UAS · Multi-robot systems
e-mail: georg.balmer@dlr.de
S. Wlach
e-mail: sven.wlach@dlr.de 1 Introduction
M. Laiacker
e-mail: maximilian.laiacker@dlr.de 1.1 Motivation and Challenges
K. Kondak
e-mail: konstantin.kondak@dlr.de In the recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
have gained widespread interest, and they are now
L. Persson
KTH Stockholm, Department of Automatic Control, used in many areas. High altitude, long endurance
Osquldas väg 10, SE-100 44, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden (HALE) UAVs are promising in terms of poten-
e-mail: laperss@kth.se tial applications; however, the development has not
yet reached the stage where a commercial use is
A. Ollero
University of Seville, ETS Ingenieria, Camino
viable. Intended for a use in the stratosphere, at alti-
Descubrimientos s/n, 41092 Sevilla, Spain tudes in the order of 20km, HALE UAVs typically
e-mail: aollero@us.es have large wingspans and very lightweight structures.
598 J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618
Equipped with solar cells and sufficient battery capac- with a human driver. The demonstrator setup is shown
ity, such airplanes can stay airborne day and night, in Fig. 1 and will be described in detail in Section 2.
which gives them a theoretically unlimited endurance. In a first step the dynamical models of the air-
This opens up possibilities for various applications, craft and ground vehicle have been derived using the
including earth observation, atmospheric science and methods described in [5, 7, 13], and [14] and a realis-
communication networks. Some of these tasks are tic simulation environment was created. The different
now performed by satellites, which are very expen- aspects of the landing manoeuvre were then sequen-
sive to build, launch and operate. Apart from saving tially analyzed before the first landing was attempted.
the cost of a rocket launch, HALE UAVs have more The concept of a ground based landing gear can be
advantages: they are independent of an orbit, and can beneficial to all types of aircraft and has already been
operate anywhere, either staying at a given location, studied in the scope of different research projects.
patrolling over a large area, or relocating as neces- Two mentionable projects can be found in [1] and
sary, e.g. in response to a natural disaster. Unlike [2], where the focus was on heavy commercial avia-
satellites, aerial vehicles would be able to return to tion and its inherent requirements. Consequently, the
the earth surface for maintenance or updates. One of resulting landing systems substantially differ from
the main limitation of HALE platforms is their typ- the solution proposed here, where the focus is on
ically low payload capacity. In order to fly at high ultra-lightweight HALE UAVs.
altitudes, a low wing loading is necessary, which trans-
lates to a large wing area and a low gross weight. 1.2 Main Contribution
However, the batteries required for overnight flight are
heavy, and further reduction of the structural mass is The main contribuntion of this work consists in the
very difficult, given the already extreme lightweight development of an integrated landing system for ultra-
design. New approaches are required to lower the light unmanned aircraft without landing gear. The
empty weight and in turn increase the payload. focus was thereby on practicality and reliability of the
The approach suggested in this paper is to remove solution. As described in [3], a first version of the pro-
the landing gear. With mission durations of several posed landing system was successfully tested using
months, the landing gear, which is only used for take- a hardware in the loop (HIL) test setup. Thereby a
off and landing, is merely dead weight for most of virtual aircraft was landed on the actual ground vehi-
the time. Without an aircraft-mounted landing gear, cle. In [4] the landing manoeuvre was successfully
new solutions need to be found for take-off and land- demonstrated for the first time using a smaller scale
ing. Take-off could be realized using some sort of a test setup. The landing was thereby executed multiple
temporary gear, which is dropped once the aircraft is times, proving the validity of the chosen approach. In
airborne. The landing, however, poses a bigger chal- the present paper, the results of the subsequent devel-
lenge. The core idea is to have a landing platform opment work and additional landing experiments are
mounted onto a ground vehicle, which is able to accel- presented. The inclusion of vision-based state esti-
erate to the UAV’s landing speed and to cooperatively mates into the control loops and the modification of
with the UAV control position and velocity, so that the the high-level mission control structure for a safer
UAV can touch down on the landing platform without
a horizontal velocity component relative to the plat-
form. This would not only eliminate the need for a
landing gear, but also facilitate landings in crosswind
situations, as the aircraft does not need to align with
the runway direction. HALE UAVs are typically very
sensitive to wind, due to their size and low weight,
and this proposed landing procedure could greatly
improve their operational availability. The overall goal
is to experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of such
a landing. For this purpose, a small UAV is used
together with a landing platform mounted on a car Fig. 1 Demonstrator setup for landing experiments
J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618 599
optical multi marker tracking showed the best perfor- analyzed and tested. In the end a very simple method
mance and was applied to increase the reliability and showed the best performance results. In the following,
precision of the relative state estimation system. the method will be explained for the UAV side, but
was implemented in the same way for the ground vehi-
3.1 Networked State Estimation and Lag cle. The locally measured UAV position is subtracted
Compensation from an obsolete UGV position received via the wire-
less network. The relative position is calculated and
Each vehicle’s sensor data needs to be transmitted via the signal lag corrected for, using the above described
a wireless network and fused with the other vehicle’s lag estimation together with the ground vehicle veloc-
local sensor data. In our case GPS position and veloc- ity that was measured together with its position (at the
ity are exchanged together with the corresponding same moment in time):
timestamp (GPS Time). This data needs to be synchro-
nized and communication delays compensated for. For x rel (t) = x U GV (t−tlag )+v U GV (t−tlag )·tlag−x U AV (t)
effective lag compensation, the amount of signal lag
(2)
needs to be determined, which is done via the GPS
timestamps. This calculation is performed on both
with:
vehicles, where the obsolete measurement received
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
via the wireless network is subtracted from the local x u
measurement. In the case of the UAV the lag estimate x(t) = ⎣ y ⎦ v(t) = ⎣ v ⎦ (3)
is calculated as follows: z w
tlag = tlocal U AV − tnetwork U GV (1)
The reference frame used to describe the above
The calculation is performed in the same way on quantities is pointing in runway direction with its
the UGV. A typical lag profile encountered during x-axis, the y-axis is pointing to the right and the z-
landing tests is illustrated in Fig. 4. axis downwards. Due to the lack of synchronized
As can be seen in Fig. 4, the signal lag estimates acceleration measurements, lag compensation was not
are only available in discrete steps of 0.05s, which implemented for the calculation of relative veloci-
corresponds to the used GPS sensor’s measurement ties. Here it was assumed that the respective vehicle’s
frequency of 20H z. At a landing velocity of around velocity did not change from its previous value when
21 ms , this would result in a minimum value of 1.05m lag occurred.
for the correction of the relative position. The signal
lag typically ranges from 0.05s to 0.15s with occa- 3.2 Optical Marker Tracking
sional outliers at 0.2s and more. The main factors
influencing the signal lag are the wireless data trans- The relative state estimation method described in the
mission and the increased amount of signal routing previous chapter is based on data exchange via a
present in the system, as positioning data is exchanged wireless network. This induces significant signal lag
between the two vehicles via the ground station. which needs to be compensated for. The lag compen-
Different fusion methods (including Kalman filters sation method proposed in Section 3.1 is only valid for
and buffer based synchronization methods) have been smaller deviations from the linear forward motion, as
obsolete velocities are used for extrapolation. A virtu-
ally lag-free optical multi marker detection and local-
ization method was therefore developed and imple-
mented to further increase the robustness and preci-
sion of the target estimation. These directly measured
relative state estimates are then fused with the net-
worked GPS-based estimates as will be described in
Section 3.3. This leads to a more reliable system,
which is less sensitive to a degraded GPS quality or
Fig. 4 Typical lag profile during flight tests complete sensor outages.
602 J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618
GPS or communication problems during the most crit- the measurement noise covariance matrices for GPS
ical phase of the landing which significantly increases and marker tracking are:
the reliability of the landing system. Figure 7 shows a ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
series of images, illustrating the continuous function- 0.4 0 0 40 0
ality of the optical multi marker tracking algorithm R GP S = ⎣ 0 0.4 0 ⎦ R vision = ⎣0 4 0 ⎦
until touchdown. 0 0 1.6 0 0 16
(6)
3.3 Sensor Data Fusion
The relative velocity estimate is used to estimate
To use both the marker detection and the relative GPS the relative position when no new measurement is
position the sensor data is fused using a linear Kalman available. The Kalman filter is running at 20H z.
filter. The fused realtive position is then used in the
control loops. The state of the filter consist of the three
relative position components and relative velocity x = 4 Cooperative Control
[x, y, z, u, v, w]. The state transition matrix is
⎡ ⎤ In the following subsections a right handed coordinate
1 0 0 Δt 0 0 system is used to describe the motion of the aircraft
⎢ 0 1 0 0 Δt 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥ and the ground vehicle. The reference frame origin is
⎢ 0 0 1 0 0 Δt ⎥
A=⎢ ⎢0 0 0 1 0 0 ⎥
⎥ (4) located at the northern end of the runway (black home
⎢ ⎥ icon in Fig. 24), with the x-axis pointing in southward
⎣0 0 0 0 1 0 ⎦
runway direction, the y-axis to the right, and the z-
000 0 0 1 axis downwards. It will be referred to as local runway
The filter is updated with the measurement that is coordinate system.
available at the update timestep. If both sensors have
valid measurements only the relative GPS position is 4.1 Longitudinal cooperative control
used to update the filter. The system noise covariance
matrix is: Two main phases were considered during the land-
⎡ ⎤ ing. At the beginning of the landing manoeuvre, the
0.005 0 0 0 0 0
⎢ 0 0.005 0 0 0 0 ⎥ UGV is at rest at the runway threshold, while the
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0.0005 0 0 0 ⎥ UAV is far behind, approaching the runway. While
Q=⎢ ⎢ 0
⎥ (5)
⎢ 0 0 0.15 0 0 ⎥⎥
the UAV is catching up, the UGV already needs to
⎣ 0 0 0 0 0.15 0 ⎦ accelerate to match the UAV’s speed. For this initial
0 0 0 0 0 0.01 acceleration phase, the UGV speed command is cal-
culated under the assumption that the UAV maintains
its speed, while the UGV has a constant acceleration.
With these assumptions, and the constraint that speed
and position shall be aligned at the same time, the
following UGV speed command is derived:
VU GV = VU AV − 2 · aU GV · (xU GV − xU AV ) (7)
VU2 AV
xU GV − xU AV = (8)
Fig. 7 Continuous optical marker tracking until touchdown 2 · aU GV
604 J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618
The start of the UGV acceleration phase depends However, as there are relatively tight constraints on
on the UAV speed and the UGV acceleration. Assum- the UAV’s airspeed, especially during approach and
ing a typical approach speed of 19 ms for the UAV landing, the control authority is rather limited for the
and roughly half the maximum UGV acceleration for UAV.
aU GV , a relative position of around 190m is found. A stability analysis with the linearized system mod-
Since VU AV in this case is the UAV’s ground speed, els of the UAV and UGV has been performed for the
effects of head- or tailwind are automatically consid- longitudinal direction. This analysis has shown that
ered and the UGV will adjust its acceleration phase the coupled system remains stable in a wide range of
accordingly, as defined in Eqs. 7 and 8. gains k1 and k2 .
While a constant, relatively high acceleration is The total longitudinal system consisting of UAV
ideal for the initial acceleration phase of the UGV, it is and UGV can be expressed as one single decoupled
not suitable for close proximity operations in the sec- system of the form:
ond phase, where small position and velocity errors
19 pos_rel
1
UAV
UAV Coupled Controller v _des_UAV vel _UAV s pos_UAV
Fig. 9 Root locus plot for linearized overall system (UAV and Fig. 11 Root locus plot for linearized overall system (UAV and
UGV) with position feedback only to UGV UGV) with position feedback to both vehicles
606 J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618
As can be seen, the blue pole remains on the real axis The modified airspeed command, which is sent to
for all values k1 . the UAV flight controller, can be derived as follows:
Figure 10 shows the root locus plot for the con-
troller structure of Equation 13 where the relative VA des = (Vk des − Vk ) + VA (15)
positions are fed back only to the UAV. The ground
If such command was fed to the current aircraft
vehicle is commanded to adjust its speed to the current
velocity controller (based on airspeed control error
UAV ground speed, automatically compensating for
eVA ), only the control error in flight path velocity eVk
changing wind conditions. As can be seen, an imag-
would be considered for the generation of actuator
inary part is developed with an increasing controller
commands, as VA would cancel out:
gain k2 .
Figure 11 shows the root locus plot of the fully cou- eVA = VA des − VA = (Vk des − Vk ) + VA − VA
pled system as defined through Equation 14, where the
= Vk des − Vk = eVk (16)
positioning error is fed back to both vehicles. Again,
an imaginary component is developed with increas- The desired ground speed command is then deter-
ing controller gains k1 and k2 (changing both gains mined as follows:
simultaneously).
In the end the first controller structure as shown Vk des = Vk land + k · (xU GV − xU AV ) (17)
in Fig. 9 was considered to be favorable to the other
approaches. As mentioned before all three approaches
lead to similar overall dynamics with comparable time Vk = VA land + Vk − VA = VA land + Vw (18)
land
constants and stability margin. For the first approach
the real axis pole does not develop an imaginary Here the wind estimate Vw represents the averaged
component with an increasing controller gain. This difference between the UAV ground speed and air-
implies lower oscillations and consequently less con- speed (denoted as Vk − VA ), read out at the moment
trol activity for both systems. It also represents a landing mode is activated (shortly after reaching WP2
simpler practical realization, with the UAV velocity in Fig. 24). As a result, Vk land represents the UAV
being constant and independent of the ground vehi- ground speed command that would approximately
cle state. Additionally all three approaches were tested produce the airspeed present at landing mode initi-
in flight experiments where the first control structure ation. A low-pass filter with a cut-off frequency of
was confirmed to be the best choice for the current 0.2H z was used to obtain an averaged value for the
experimental setup. wind estimate Vw . The resulting modified airspeed
command required for ground speed tracking is then
4.2 Ground Speed Tracking Mode found as:
action. The desired course for the UAV and the ground is performed on top of a moving landing platform, the
vehicle are now calculated as follows: touchdown vertical velocity is adjusted through the
retard and ground lock settings, as will be described in
χU AV = χrunway + k1 (yU GV − yU AV )
Section 6. The flare initiation altitude hf lare was set
1
+k2 (yU GV − yU AV ) (20) to 5m (relative altitude).
s
+k3 (vU GV − vU AV )
Fig. 12 Simplified diagram of a conventional altitude con- h, flight path angle γ , angle of attack α and pitch rate q,
troller. It consists of four cascaded loops controlling altitude respectively, using P, PI and PD controllers
608 J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618
Fig. 13 Simulation of a 50m climb at constant commanded airspeed (left) and a 8 ms speed increase at constant commanded altitude
(right) for the SISO and energy based (TECS) flight controllers
Fig. 14 Simplified diagram of the lateral/directional flight controller. It consists of three cascaded loops controlling course, bank
angle and roll rate p, respectively, using P and PI controllers
J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618 609
Fig. 15 Horizontal flight with the energy based flight con- Fig. 17 A 3 ms speed increase with the energy based flight con-
troller. The altitude error remains within ±1m, the airspeed troller. The altitude command is tracked just as well as during
error within ±1.5 ms (commanded values are displayed in blue, level flight, showing the good coordination of elevator and throt-
actual sensor data in red) tle (commanded values are displayed in blue, actual sensor data
in red)
As can be seen on the left side of Fig. 13 the SISO
controller is not able to maintain the airspeed dur- Steps in airspeed and altitude were followed with
ing the climb, despite a full throttle command. The only small overshoots, and with no coupling effect
energy based control logic however reduces the climb visible in the other variable. Figure 16 shows an exem-
angle as necessary to maintain the airspeed. On the plary climb and descent manoeuvre, while Figs. 17
right image in Fig. 13 a 8 ms speed increase at con- and 18 show different step commands in airspeed.
stant altitude is shown. The coordination of throttle
and elevator is clearly noticeable for the energy based
controller. In the SISO case, the altitude error reaches 6 Retard and Ground Lock
2.5m, while the energy based controller keeps it under
1m. Before a touchdown on top of the landing platform
For the directional control of the aircraft, a conven- can be attempted, the aircraft engine has to be shut
tional SISO controller using the ailerons as actuators down in order not to damage the aircraft or the landing
was implemented as shown in Fig. 14. platform. This so-called “retard” takes place during
The flight control system was tested in flight exper- a critical phase of the landing manoeuvre, where the
iments and performed as desired [5]. In straight and aircraft is very close to the landing platform. A sud-
level flight, the controller was able to keep the alti- den loss of thrust force (throttle cut-off) will produce
tude within ±1m and the airspeed within ±1.5 ms of a deceleration of the aircraft, consequently a decrease
the desired value, as shown in Fig. 15.
Fig. 19 Ground tests with aircraft on top of landing platform to determine the best strategy for the ground lock mechanism
of lift force and result in an increasing relative veloc- As mentioned before in Section 4.4, a non-zero ver-
ity and position in x- and z-direction (backward and tical velocity is required for the landing and needs
downward motion). to be configured correctly (ideally 0.2 ms at touch-
At the same time the aircraft is already close enough down). Therefore, the effects of both modes have
to the ground vehicle to experience the aerodynamic been analyzed during virtual landing approaches at
disturbances caused by the ground vehicle (increased higher altitudes and the produced additional down-
airspeed and angle of attack). This so-called “UGV ward velocities ḣ(t) have been determined through
flow effect” will partly compensate the downward direct measurement. The final (relative) activation
motion but increase the backward motion due to the altitude was set to 0.6m for “retard mode” and 0.2m
higher aerodynamic drag. for “ground lock mode”.
These complex effects have to be compensated by It should be noted, that the presented locking mech-
the flight controller, while now (after engine cut-off) anism has been adapted to the demonstrator setup and
only the elevator is available to control either altitude is not directly transferable to a larger aircraft. For
or velocity. The decision was taken in favor of velocity the final large scale landing system, the ground lock
control; the desired vertical velocity at touchdown is mechanism has to be reworked, since a landing on a
achieved by adjusting the altitude at which retard is stretched net will not be possible anymore. Among
activated. other things, this might include the introduction of pre-
In the last moments before touchdown the so-called defined attachment points on the aircraft aswell asanattitude
“ground-lock” configuration is activated. Thereby the alignment and locking system on the ground side.
ailerons are deflected to the maximum upward posi-
tion symmetrically to reduce lift, the elevators are
deflected downward to half of the maximum travel 7 Ground Vehicle Control
to generate a nose down moment, and the flaps are
fully retracted. This configuration showed the best Early simulations have shown that relatively slow
performance results during a number of ground tests, ground vehicle dynamics are sufficient for the execu-
where the actual aircraft was placed on top of landing tion of a successful cooperative landing manoeuvre.
platform at around 70 kmh . It was also found that a pitch The choice was therefore taken in favor of a manned
damper had to remain active in order to reduce possi- “semi-autonomous” ground vehicle. In this solution
ble oscillations once the aircraft is lying on the net of a human driver has to execute the control commands
the landing platform, as well as a locking mechanism, provided by the ground vehicle controller. The human
assuring that the front landing gear remains locked-in basically replaces the mechanical actuator or driv-
once it crossed the landing platform net, as illustrated ing robot. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) mounted
in Fig. 19. inside the car is used for displaying the corrective
J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618 611
action the “human actuator” has to perform. There- the last 15s before touchdown remains within a bound
fore a screen was mounted inside the ground vehicle of around 0.6 ms .
as shown in Fig. 20. The delay in the beginning of the acceleration phase
The GUI has been designed as a two-colored at around 12s into the landing manoeuvre is due to
crosshair with the horizontal line indicating throttle the delay introduced by the ground vehicle’s auto-
commands and the vertical line representing steer- matic transmission and the human reaction time. The
ing wheel deflection commands. Both, the ground notch in actual UGV velocity at around 15s is due to
vehicle velocity and course controllers were imple- the automatic transmission shifting gears. The ground
mented as proportional controllers, directly translating vehicle starts to decelerate and at around 38s due
velocity/course command into throttle/steering wheel to the fact, that only a relatively short taxiway with
deflection commands, allowing for the adjustment of a length of only 500m was used for the performed
the closed-loop ground vehicle dynamics despite the experiments. Only around one second after the virtual
human driver. The ground vehicle has been equipped touchdown, the ground vehicle reached the end of the
with the same real-time computer and sensor system available runway and had to decelerate, leading to an
(RTK GPS, IMU) as present on the UAV. Data is increase in desired UGV velocity.
exchanged via a wireless network. During first landing
experiments with a simulated UAV as described in [3],
the human driver was capable of following the given 8 Ground Vehicle Aerodynamics
throttle commands reasonably well. As can be seen in
Fig. 21, the actual ground vehicle velocity follows the The aerodynamic disturbance caused by the ground
desired velocity, where the maximum deviation during vehicle was identified as an important issue and
15
Touchdown at 37s
10
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
manoeuvre time [s]
Fig. 21 Ground vehicle desired vs. actual velocity during a virtual landing experiment (real ground vehicle, virtual aircraft)
612 J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618
2 1.04
2.5%
1 1.02
0 1
-1 0.98
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
x-position [m]
0.5 1.02
landing platform
0 1
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
y-position [m]
Fig. 23 Longitudinal (x) and lateral (y) distribution of induced angle of attack (black) and relative velocity (red) at 1m above landing
platform
J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618 613
is required from the operator. However, at any point The landing was successfully performed multiple
the operator is able to initiate a go-around by a manual times. The required landing precision of ±0.8m was
command, resulting in the same go-around manoeuvre consistently achieved.
that is performed when the UAV leaves the outer As described in Section 9, the landing manoeu-
fence. During the go-around, whether it was initiated vre was automatically controlled via a high-level state
automatically or manually, the operator can also com- machine logic. During a typical successful landing
mand a landing again, but this command only has an manoeuvre sequence, the different states are passed
effect if the UAV is inside the outer fence.
10 Landing Experiments
Fig. 28 Relative vehicle velocities during exemplary landing attempt (right: vertical zoom)
616 J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618
The ground vehicle velocity tracking performance fence margins just after crossing hf lare at 5m altitude,
during the selected landing attempt is shown in it will try to recover the horizontal misalignment while
Fig. 30, demonstrating the validity of the human actu- maintaining altitude and minimizing parasitic effects
ator concept. on the horizontal controller performance.
After the first set of landing experiments were con-
cluded, a couple of changes have been implemented
to further improve the performance of the landing sys-
tem. The initially applied constant climb angle of 10◦
during a low-retry (below hf lare ) was affecting the
system performance, as it would induce a rather abrupt
climb manoeuvre, even if the aircraft was still high
above the landing platform. Although the flight con-
troller is able to decouple aircraft responses in velocity
and altitude, sudden changes are not always perfectly
handled. An adaptive climb angle was therefore intro-
duced, where the UAV would only climb abruptly
when close to the landing platform and smoother when
further away:
π
γclimb = (hf lare − h) · (27)
72
This results in a hold altitude behavior at h =
hf lare and a commanded climb angle of 12.5◦ at h = Fig. 30 Ground vehicle desired velocity vs. actual velocity for
0m. Therefore if the aircraft is pushed out of the inner the selected landing attempt
J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 88:597–618 617