Autonomous Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This thesis presents the system architecture for landing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) from a hovering position without the intervention of a human operator. Through the use of feedback information from a height sensor, the UAV is commanded to perform controlled descent with the desired landing parameters by implementation of the flight control laws. The plant model of the system was determined in order to simulate the system using Matlab, Simulink. Through the use of simulations, the variables of the controllers are varied to determine the most appropriate gains that will result in the most preferred landing profile. In this project, the vertical component which controls the climb and descends of the platform was isolated from the roll, pitch and yaw through the use of a jig. Therefore, this current project only commands the height of the platform but can be fully expanded to command the roll, pitch and yaw with addition sensors such as rate gyro.