Detection and localization of helipad in autonomous UAV landing: a coupled visual-inertial approach with artificial intelligence

Autonomous landing of rotary wing type unmanned aerial vehicles is a challenging problem and key to autonomous aerial fleet operation. We propose a method for localizing the UAV around the helipad, that is to estimate the relative position of the helipad with respect to the UAV. This data is highly desirable to design controllers that have robust and consistent control characteristics and can find applications in search – rescue operations. AI-based neural network is set up for helipad detection, followed by optimization by the localization algorithm. The performance of this approach is compared against fiducial marker approach, demonstrating good consensus between two estimations