Hanging Drone: An Approach to UAV Landing for Monitoring

Official implementation of Hanging Drone: An Approach to UAV Landing for Monitoring

Description

This work's approach allows a Tello Drone to land in strategic locations for data acquisition, resulting in significantly less battery consumption. The method uses principles from stereo vision through a monocular camera motion to estimate the relative position of a selected landing site, allowing a drone to hang itself by a hook in an artificial (e.g., aluminum frame, power line) or natural (e.g., tree branch) location. However, the system is limited to static landing sites where the FAST feature detector algorithm can detect features.

See the demonstration video:

Drone Utilized

Citation

Accepted and awaiting publication.

@InProceedings{Cechinel:2023,
    author    = {Cechinel, Alan K. and Röning, Juha and Tikanmaki, Antti and De Pieri, Edson R. and Plentz, Patricia D. M.},
    title     = {{Hanging Drone}: An Approach to UAV Landing for Monitoring},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - ICINCO},
    month     = {},
    year      = {2023},
    pages     = {}
}

Requirements

Install the TelloPy library and replace the original tello.py file with the tello.py (provided in this repository) modified to work with multiple drones. keep in mind that each drone must be connected to a dedicated WiFi interface.

git clone https://github.com/alankc/landing_pipeline
cd landing_pipeline
pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the system

The file parameters.yaml contains a series of parameters used by the system. To run the system with these default parameters just run:

python main.py

If you need to change parameters, you can either edit the parameters on parameters.yaml or create your own parameter file. To run the system with a custom parameters file use:

python main.py -p your_file.yaml

Waiting Connection

In the waiting connection state, the drone is going to ask for a drone to the battery recharge station.

If it does not receive drone information, the system will try to connect to the drone informed by the parameters.yaml

General Options

Key	Function
ESC	Exit

Manual Control

In this mode, you can navigate the drone manually, start the autonomous landing, and much more.

See the map of keys and a list explaining each key/function.

This file was derived from: KB United States.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

General Options

Key	Function
ESC	Land and Exit
1	Runs landing pipeline with Yolo (autonomous mode)
2	Runs landing pipeline with the selected shape (autonomous mode)
3	Reset the selected shape
q	land
e	takeoff
m	Send a land request to recharge station
g	Open destination window
SPACE	Switch between autonomous and manual

Movement Options

Key	Function
Left Hand
w	up
s	down
a	rotate counterclockwise
d	rotate clockwise
Right Hand
i	forward
k	backward
j	left
l	right

During the flight you can also select a location to land with the mouse, just start selecting the polygon with a left click. Keys 2 and 3 are related to this option. After you select the landing site you can press 2 to the drone to try to hang itself there.

Waiting Manual Land Permission

After pressing the key m, in the manual control mode, the system tries to get permission from the recharge station to land and change batteries.

General Options

Key	Function
ESC	Land and Exit
SPACE	Switch to manual

Manual Land

After the system receives permission to land in the previous state, the operator can land the drone on the recharge station.

Note that this type of landing is unrelated to the autonomous landing using the hook.

General Options

Key	Function
ESC	Land and Exit
q	Land
e	Disconnect from the drone
SPACE	Switch to manual

Movement Options

Key	Function
Left Hand
w	up
s	down
a	rotate counterclockwise
d	rotate clockwise
Right Hand
i	forward
k	backward
j	left
l	right

Autonomous Landing

After the user presses keys 1 or 2 in the manual control, the system starts the autonomous landing using the hook.

General Options

Key	Function
ESC	Land and Exit
SPACE	Switch between autonomous and manual

Go To

After the user presses key g in the manual control, the system is going to open a window where the user can inform a relative position. Then the drone is going to navigate to this position autonomously.

General Options

Key	Function
ESC	Land and Exit
SPACE	Returno to manual mode