Study on Improvement of Docking Mechanism for Docking–Undocking Drones in the Air and Docking Control Using an Onboard Camera

In this study, we developed a docking mechanism for drones that enables docking and undocking in the air for cargo transportation. This capability allows the drone configuration to be adapted depending on the cargo size and shape. We introduced a novel docking mechanism that incorporates magnetic adsorption and a newly engineered locking mechanism. We developed a drone detection system capable of estimating the relative position of a target drone by utilizing an onboard camera to identify the infrared LEDs on the target drone via image processing. Moreover, flight experiments, including detection, docking, and undocking, were performed using a mock drone to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed system.