Fast autonomous landing on a moving target at MBZIRC

Abstract

The ability to identify, follow, approach, and intercept a non-stationary target is a desirable capability of autonomous micro aerial vehicles (MAV) and puts high demands on reliable target perception, fast trajectory planning, and stable control. We present a fully autonomous MAV that lands on a planar platform mounted on a ground vehicle, relying only on onboard sensing and computing. We evaluate our system in simulation as well as with real robot experiments. Its resilience was demonstrated at the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) where it worked under competition conditions. Our team NimbRo ranked third in the MBZIRC Challenge 1 and - in combination with two other tasks - won the MBZIRC Grand Challenge.