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

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 (RFDE) formulation of the problem, and delay margins are determined for particular closed loop setups. Simulation results are presented, which demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for autonomous outdoor coordinated landing.