Master's Project (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) use Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to
determine their position for automated flight. The GPS signals require an unobstructed view
of the sky in order to obtain position information. When inside without a clear view of the
sky, such as in a building or mine, other methods are necessary to obtain the relative position
of the UAV. For obstacle avoidance a LIDAR/SONAR system is sufficient to ensure
automated flight, but for precision landing the LIDAR/SONAR system is insufficient for
effectively identifying the location of the landing platform and providing flight control inputs
to guide the UAV to the landing platform. This project was developed in order to solve this
problem by creating a guidance system utilizing an infrared (IR) camera to track an IR LED
and blue LEDs mounted on the UAV from a RaspberryPI 3 Model B+. The RaspberryPI,
using OpenCV libraries, can effectively track the position of the LED lights mounted on the
UAV, determine rotational and lateral corrections based on this tracking, and, using
Dronekit-Python libraries, command the UAV to position itself and land on the platform of
the Husky UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle)
