A Lightweight Toggleable Adhesion Prototype for Multirotor UAV Landing on Tilting Platforms

2026-04-24

AI Summary

Landing multirotor drones on inclined unmanned surface vessels under wave-induced disturbances is challenged by stringent attitude tolerances, strong wind perturbations, and limited landing zones, resulting in low success rates. This work proposes a lightweight, switchable adhesion mechanism that achieves reliable attachment through motor-driven helical hooks actively engaging with hook-and-loop fasteners, while enabling controlled release during takeoff. The design is structurally simple, lightweight, and uniquely combines active adhesion with on-demand detachment. Integrated with a basic vertical PID controller, experimental validation on a custom-tilted platform demonstrates a significant improvement in landing success rate—from a baseline average of 40% to 80%—even at inclinations as high as 43°, substantially enhancing system robustness.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Multiagent Systems: Adversarial Agents
• Computer Vision: Adversarial Attacks & Robustness

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Vertical and domain-specific search
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Autonomous multirotor landings on uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) are critical for persistent maritime operations but remain challenging due to wave-induced tilt, wind disturbances, and limited landing area. Many existing approaches exhibit small pose tolerance for reliable landing. This paper presents a lightweight toggleable adhesion mechanism to improve landing reliability. The system uses a motor-driven corkscrew that engages hook-and-loop material on the landing surface, enabling active adhesion during landing and controlled release during takeoff. We evaluate a prototype using a modified Crazyflie 2.0 and a custom tilting platform at fixed angles representative of extreme wave conditions. Using only a simple vertical PID controller, the proposed approach increases landing success from an average of 40% (baseline) to 80% across platform tilts up to 43 degrees using appropriately selected actuation settings.

Problem

• multirotor UAV landing
• tilting platforms
• adhesion mechanism
• maritime operations
• landing reliability

Innovation

• toggleable adhesion
• multirotor UAV landing
• tilting platform
• hook-and-loop material
• lightweight mechanism