Autonomous Landing of a Three-Arm UAV on Various Surfaces using Depth Sensing
Hannibal Paul, Hironori Matsuhisa, Ricardo Rosales Martinez, Kazuhiro Shimonomura · 2025
UAVs often face challenges when landing on unstructured surfaces such as rough terrain, sloped roofs, and and dynamically moving platforms. Conventional landing mechanisms assume flat and stable ground, which limits UAV applications in real-world environments. This paper presents an adaptive landing strategy for a three-arm VTOL UAV equipped with rotating and sliding joints, utilizing a depth camera to estimate the surface height in real time and autonomously adjust its position. Gazebo-based simulations in ROS2 evaluate the landing performance of the UAV on various surfaces, including flat, stairs, slope and rugged. The depth camera provides surface elevation information to adjust the arms before landing. The results demonstrate that the UAV effectively adapts to varying terrains, maintaining a stable horizontal position even after landing. The depth-based perception approach improves landing versatility, making the UAV more suitable for real-world deployment in unstructured environments.