Protocol for autonomous landing of unmanned air vehicles on research vessels

The growing availability of robotic platforms and open-source software presents a striking opportunity for the advancement of scientific instrumentation. Multirotors are particularly versatile platforms which offer some clear advantages for marine-based research missions including mapping and surveying of coastal, glacial, or marine features, photogrammetry, remote atmospheric or water sample collection, specimen tracking, and rare-event monitoring. The Olin College Intelligent Vehicle Laboratory has been actively developing on multirotor platforms to autonomously perform these missions, with special focus on photogrammetric and breath condensate sample collection from cetaceans.