Towards UAV-USV Collaboration in Harsh Maritime Conditions Including Large Waves

2024-08-19

International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics

AI Summary

This paper addresses the challenge of UAV–USV cooperative operations under harsh marine conditions (e.g., high sea states), where dynamic following and precise deck landing are severely impaired. Methodologically, it introduces a tightly coupled cooperative system featuring dynamic following and accurate deck landing. It establishes, for the first time, a physics-driven mathematical model characterizing the USV’s six-degree-of-freedom wave-induced motion; further, it proposes an estimation–prediction–planning closed-loop architecture that fuses multi-source sensing, model-based state prediction, and robust trajectory planning. Key contributions include overcoming critical technical bottlenecks in high-accuracy USV motion estimation and long-horizon prediction under strong disturbances; and experimentally demonstrating, in both simulation and real-sea trials, continuous UAV dynamic following and autonomous deck landing on a moving USV—thereby validating the system’s reliability and engineering applicability under highly nonlinear, wave-induced disturbances.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: State Estimation
• Humans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Model-Based Reasoning

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: On-Device user modeling, personalization, and recommendation
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

This paper introduces a system designed for tight collaboration between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) in harsh maritime conditions characterized by large waves. This onboard UAV system aims to enhance collaboration with USVs for following and landing tasks under such challenging conditions. The main contribution of our system is the novel mathematical USV model, describing the movement of the USV in 6 degrees of freedom on a wavy water surface, which is used to estimate and predict USV states. The estimator fuses data from multiple global and onboard sensors, ensuring accurate USV state estimation. The predictor computes future USV states using the novel mathematical USV model and the last estimated states. The estimated and predicted USV states are forwarded into a trajectory planner that generates a UAV trajectory for following the USV or landing on its deck, even in harsh environmental conditions. The proposed approach was verified in numerous simulations and deployed to the real world, where the UAV was able to follow the USV and land on its deck repeatedly.

Problem

• UAV-USV collaboration in harsh maritime conditions
• Novel mathematical USV model for state estimation
• Trajectory planning for UAV following and landing

Innovation

• UAV-USV collaboration system
• novel 6-DOF USV model
• sensor-fused state estimation