I finally got around to editing the footage of this fully-automated Precision Landing mission. The purpose of this mission is to demonstrate how vision-assisted Precision Landing can be a solution to the 'last 100 ft' problem, where traditional GPS is not sufficiently accurate to navigate to a precise location (RTK GPS systems are another possible solution). Some applications areas are automated landing on charging stations, boats/ground vehicles, or even your front porch. :)
The inputs to the mission are GPS waypoints, which are set at the known coordinates of two stationary IR Beacons. The mission is to travel to the next GPS WP, and then 'Precision Land' on the nearby Beacon. This work was performed a while back with an older version of AC, so we are transferring the code to a fork of AC3.2.1.
Thanks for watching! If you would like to stay up-to-date with our progress, or to check more details, our website is here:
http://precisionlanding.irlock.com
NOTE that the 'bullseyes' in the video are only used as an accuracy reference (not for the machine-vision processing).
For excellent 'bullseye examples', check the work done by Daniel Nugent. (link)
For more explanations about IR-based machine vision, check out the recent post by Dan Wilson. (link)
Best,
Thomas