Visual Control and Mapping for UAV-Based Platform Inspection

Autonomous take-off and landing capabilities are crucial in UAV vision-based missions, ensuring adaptive navigation, especially in challenging environments where realtime identification and interaction with a variety of landing platforms are required. In this context, this paper presents a servo-visual controller that uses pattern detection and color segmentation techniques to identify take-off/landing platforms and estimate their current orientation. The proposed system was subjected to experimental validation with four platforms positioned in different orientations, heights, and positions, demonstrating its versatility in various conditions. Our study addresses the Flying Robots Trial League challenge, which emulates mapping and inspection tasks in offshore platforms.