Post-Mission Autonomous Return and Precision Landing of UAV

As recalling an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) after completing a mission requires quite a lot of attention and skill from its operator, in this paper we propose a method to empower UAV with the capability to autonomously return to base and perform precision landing after completing a mission. The main challenge being tackled in this work is that while the vision-based landing technique is already mature, due to GPS error, UAV can only return to within several meters of home position after completing a mission and may fail to detect the visual marker. To resolve this problem, we employ Ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging measurements to localize and approach the home station. Once the UAV detects the visual marker, both UWB and visual tracking information are fused with onboard sensor to achieve even more accurate positioning. Real-life experiment is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme.