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Infrastructure-free Shipdeck Tracking for Autonomous Landing

Sankalp Arora, Sezal Jain, Sebastian Scherer, Stephen T. Nuske, Lyle J. Chamberlain, and Sanjiv Singh
International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May, 2013.


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Abstract
Shipdeck landing is one of the most challenging tasks for a rotorcraft. Current autonomous rotorcraft use shipdeck mounted transponders to measure the relative pose of the vehicle to the landing pad. This tracking system is not only expensive but renders an unequipped ship unlandable. We address the challenge of tracking shipdeck without additional infrastructure on the deck. We present two methods based on video and lidar that are able to track the shipdeck starting at a considerable distance from the ship. This redundant sensor design enables us to have two independent tracking systems. We show the results of the tracking algorithms in 3 different environments, 1. field testing results on actual helicopter flights, 2. in simulation with a moving shipdeck for lidar based tracking and 3. in laboratory using an occluded and moving scaled model of a landing deck for camera based tracking. The complimentary modalities allow shipdeck tracking under varying conditions.

Notes
Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Field Robotics Center

Text Reference
Sankalp Arora, Sezal Jain, Sebastian Scherer, Stephen T. Nuske, Lyle J. Chamberlain, and Sanjiv Singh, "Infrastructure-free Shipdeck Tracking for Autonomous Landing," International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May, 2013.

BibTeX Reference
@inproceedings{Sankalp_Arora_2013_7403,
   author = " {Sankalp Arora} and Sezal Jain and Sebastian Scherer and Stephen T. Nuske and Lyle J. Chamberlain and Sanjiv Singh",
   title = "Infrastructure-free Shipdeck Tracking for Autonomous Landing",
   booktitle = "International Conference on Robotics and Automation",
   month = "May",
   year = "2013",
}

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