An autonomous landing and charging system for drones

Abstract

A sensor-equipped consumer-grade drone can help collect data about the world. However, a drone's flight time today is measured in tens of minutes. Charging multiple drones in a network also requires manual assistance. In this thesis, we develop an integrated system with an autonomous charging pad that a drone can accurately land on. At the same time, the charging system allows the drone to land in environments with low visibility, especially during the nighttime. This research combined vision-based marker detection and flight control algorithms to create accurate landing procedures with different camera modules. Two charging platform designs of wireless and wired contact charging were built with the marker. The autonomous charging system enables a drone to land more accurately than the GPS-based navigation and gets charged without human assistance.