This is especially important when UAV air operations take place far from the shoreline, e.g., in search and rescue operations or environmental or threat monitoring. The latter applications are particularly interesting, because they often require the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) to start and end an air operation on a vessel. Applications of unmanned systems are found in use over land but also over water reservoirs. The increase in the importance of unmanned aerial vehicles in our lives is indisputable and obvious. The results show that the expected accuracy of 1 m is indeed achieved, and both UAVs are ready to be tested in real conditions on a ferry.

In the tests, a special mobile landing pad was built and based on a barge.

In the research, landing tests were carried out in real conditions on a lake for both UAVs. The novelty of the presented system is extending navigational data with data from the ultra wide band (UWB) system, and this makes it possible to achieve a landing accuracy of about 1 m. The computer integrates navigational data from the UAV and the landing pad navigational station through the utilization of an extended Kalman filter, which is a typical approach in such applications. Both vehicles are supported by a landing pad navigation station, which communicates with their ROS-based onboard computer.

The article presents research focused on achieving such functionalities for two kinds of UAVs, i.e., a tethered multicopter and VTOL. Autonomous take-off and landing on a moving landing pad are extraordinarily complex and challenging functionalities of modern UAVs, especially if they must be performed in windy environments.

Tethered drone station dimensions