Autonomous takeoff & landing of small UAS from the USV

A successful combination of the Interoperable Heterogeneous Unmanned Autonmous Systems for future missions at sea is becoming a reality. An Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV), as the central node and main transport mechanism, can be used to carry Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) to distances over several hundred miles. The system is designed to be modular and can easily be scaled up if needed. In this paper, the initial implementation of an advanced UAS takeoff/landing from/to a 16 foot catamaran USV (70×40 inch landing area) provides solutions that can enable the interoperability, coordination and cooperation of autonomous mobile marine robots in GPS-denied environment are presented. To enable such a heterogeneous network three main research areas have been blended: 1) image processing, 2) state estimation, and 3) cooperative control and autonomy. This paper focuses on the first two components and addresses the integration of the third one. Due to the challenges of the maritime environment, novel software and hardware have to be investigated to provide the level of flexibility and features that are required for efficient and robust landing. Robust and reliable communications have to be developed and implemented to enable an efficient sharing of data and control messages among heterogeneous surface and aerial platforms.