LP Based Path Planning for Autonomous Landing of An Unmanned Helicopter on A Moving Platform

Autonomous landing of an unmanned helicopter (UH) on a moving platform can greatly expand its application field. In this paper, a path planning method based on linear programming (LP) is proposed in the relative coordination to finish the autonomous landing task. First, the landing procedure is divided into four stages. Then, the linear constraints in each stage are established respectively which include helicopter’s flight envelope constraints and target kinematic constraints. Based on the established LP formulations, the flight control system’s optimal velocity expectation is derived. A simulation system based on FlightGear and Matlab is established and used as the validation platform for this approach, the simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of this approach and the real flight test is under development