ArUco markers pose estimation in UAV landing aid system

Recently, UAV usage spread to various areas of life. In many cases, UAVs carry expensive equipment onboard. Most of the aircraft damage occurs during the landing due to hard landings. To decrease the number of such situations landing aid systems are being developed. Since most of those systems need special airfield infrastructure, in this project a simple and low-cost system is proposed. This paper provides an overview of the UAV landing aid systems and a concept of the computer vision-based landing aid system. The proposed solution uses ArUco markers as reference points during the landing. By using marker pose estimation algorithm it is possible to determine the height of the flight during the touchdown with high accuracy. The fusion of the data acquired from the inertial sensors generates precise information about the path of the approach of the UAV. In addition, markers placed across the airstrip may be used to navigate during taxing. The developed solution has been tested for accuracy of position determination and for an influence of marker size on accuracy and measurement divergence.