Autonomous landing of a quadcopter platform on a sea vessel during rough sea state conditions

Description

This project focuses on designing the software and algorithms that enable a quadcopter to land on a sea vessel that is experiencing nonnegligible movement. In particular, the sea vessel is likely to experience predominant heaving and rolling motion, because of deep-sea waves. To accomplish such a landing, the quadcopter platform must have some knowledge of the sea state, and then be able to use this information to synchronize its motion when landing. Additionally, the quadcopter must be able to reject external forces acting upon it during this landing sequence, such as from wind conditions.

Key skills/interests:

Mathematical modelling, control design, trajectory generation, MATLAB and Simulink.

Expected outputs:

1x MSc (Eng), 1x Journal/Conference paper in a leading publication.

Supervisor:

Arnold Pretorius