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Autonomous recovery of a fixed‐wing UAV using a net suspended by two multirotor UAVs
Author(s) -
Klausen Kristian,
Fossen Thor I.,
Johansen Tor Arne
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of field robotics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.152
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4967
pISSN - 1556-4959
DOI - 10.1002/rob.21772
Subject(s) - multirotor , fixed wing , runway , net (polyhedron) , wing , marine engineering , deck , computer science , simulation , aerospace engineering , engineering , mathematics , geography , geometry , archaeology , structural engineering
This article presents a novel recovery method for fixed‐wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aimed at enabling operations from marine vessels. Instead of using the conventional method of using a fixed net on the ship deck, we propose to suspend a net under two cooperative multirotor UAVs. While keeping their relative formation, the multirotor UAVs are able to intercept the incoming fixed‐wing UAV along a virtual runway over the sea and transport it back to the ship. In addition to discussing the concept and design a control system, this paper also presents experimental validation of the proposed concept for a small‐scale UAV platform.