Image-based Navigation Shipboard Landing for Fixed Wing Carrier Landing (ImageNav-FW)

Autonomous landing of a fixed-wing Unmanned Air Vehicle on the deck of a moving ship requires a precise and accurate ship-relative navigation solution. Existing landing systems consisting of combinations of GPS, Radar, and other radio-based communications, are prone to component failure as well as unavailability of the required RF spectrum issues that may require abandoning an expensive asset at sea. The Image-based Navigation for Fixed-Wing Shipboard Landing (ImageNav-FW) system can act as a backup, replacement, or complementary solution and enables recovery in the aforementioned scenarios. The ImageNav-FW system generates ship-relative navigation estimates for its onboard guidance and control system during the final approach and terminal landing phases. ImageNav-FW uses existing visual landing aids on the ship deck and does not require any ship-to-platform synchronous datalink or GPS. In Phase-I, ImageNav-SL was developed for VTUAV using advanced computer vision methods. Phase II of that program is expanding on the concept design to specify a detailed system HW/SW design and test a prototype implementation using data collects and real-time open-loop flight tests. In the ImageNav FW Phase II, SSCI will apply the ImageNav-SL algorithms to fixed-wing landing and augment them with state estimation of Visual Landing Aids (VLA), e.g. IFLOLS, and landing lights.