Coordinated Control Of Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle With Launch And Recovery System

The primary objective of the launch and recovery system (LARS) is to extend the operational time of battery-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by providing continuous power via a tether while ensuring safe flight operations. However, the tether introduces coupling between the LARS and UAV, increasing the system’s complexity, and demanding the development of algorithms for coordinated control. Additionally, mounting the LARS on a mobile robot or vehicle provides significant operational flexibility, but introduces spatial constraints in terms of design, thereby limiting the landing platform size. This means there is no margin for error in the landing phase, making precise and reliable estimation of the UAV’s position relative to the LARS an imperative. This paper gives a comprehensive overview of the developed system and emphasizes the approach taken to address these challenges from a control and estimation perspective. The effectiveness of the system and proposed control algorithms is validated in a real-world environment through field tests carried out during the SeaClear project demonstrations.