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Coordinated landing of a quadrotor on a skid-steered ground vehicle in the presence of time delays

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Abstract

This work presents a control technique to autonomously coordinate a landing between a quadrotor UAV and a skid-steered UGV. Local controllers to feedback linearize the models are presented, and a joint decentralized controller is developed to coordinate a rendezvous for the two vehicles. The effects of time delays on closed loop stability are examined using a Retarded Functional Differential Equation formulation of the problem, and delay margins are determined for particular closed loop setups. Both simulation and experimental results are presented, which demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for autonomous outdoor coordinated landing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    John M. Daly, Yan Ma & Steven L. Waslander

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  1. John M. Daly
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  2. Yan Ma
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  3. Steven L. Waslander
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steven L. Waslander.

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Daly, J.M., Ma, Y. & Waslander, S.L. Coordinated landing of a quadrotor on a skid-steered ground vehicle in the presence of time delays. Auton Robot 38, 179–191 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-014-9400-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-014-9400-5

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