Bio-inspired Landing of Quadrotor using Improved State Estimation

This paper presents an improved state estimation technique - a fusion of Monocular SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and INS (Inertial Navigation System). It is utilized in landing a commercially available low cost quadrotor (Parrot AR Drone 2.0) in indoor environments along a trajectory generated by a bio-inspired guidance method. The method is based on Tau theory and facilitates safe and smooth landing of UAVs by closing motion gaps with zero relative velocity and acceleration. A depth camera (Microsoft Kinect) provides a helping hand in very accurate landing towards the end of the quadrotor's trajectory. A dynamic inversion based controller is designed which works as a outer loop controller for the quadrotor. (C) 2018, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.