Byoung-Mun Min, Min-Jea Tahk, David Hyunchul Shim and Hyochoong Bang
International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sicences, vol. 8, no. 1, pp.46-53, 2007

Abstract : In this paper, a guidance law for vision-based automatic landing of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is proposed. Automatic landing is a challenging but crucial capability for UAVs to achieve a fully autonomous flight. In an autonomous landing maneuver of UAVs, the decision of where to landing and the generation of guidance command to achieve a successful landing are very significant problem. This paper is focused on the design of guidance law applicable to automatic landing problem of fixed-wing UAV and rotary-wing UAV, simultaneously. The proposed guidance law generates acceleration command as a control input which derived from a specified time-to-go polynomial function. The coefficient of polynomial function are determined to satisfy some terminal constraints. Nonlinear simulation results using a fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAV models are presented.

Keyword : Guidance law, Vision-based, Automatic landing, Fixed-wing, Rotary- wing, polynomial, Terminal constraints, Nonlinear simulation.