I am planning a maritime VTOL operation and would like to ask for technical advice or references.
- Firmware: PX4 v1.14.0
- Hardware: Pixhawk + VectorNav VN-300 (Dual-antenna GNSS/INS)
- Mission: Autonomous takeoff and landing on a ship moving at ~5m/s.
Questions
- Are there any specific PX4 configurations or modules recommended for handling take-off or landing on a moving deck in a maritime environment?
- Are there any known cases or flight references for operating on large steel structures (like ships or offshore platforms)? Since we are using VN-300 for dual-antenna heading, we aim to bypass magnetometer issues, but we’d like to know if there are other considerations.
- Are there any documented cases or flight logs of PX4-based VTOLs performing auto take-off and landing on moving targets?
Any guidance or documentation links would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
That’s a unique problem. A quick search and here are some research papers concerning landing drones on moving ships. One uses a Pixhawk drone with IMU hardware on the ship to correctly orient the drone to the ship. If you know the roll and pitch of the ship, just before touchdown, you can make the drone match the roll and pitch.
Methodologies for landing autonomous aerial vehicles on maritime vessels
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1270963820308518
Autonomous Landing of a Rotary-Wing UAV on a Shipboard
Autonomous Ship-board Landing using Monocular Vision
“These trajectories were then tracked by the trajectory following controller whose outputs, desired attitude and throttle, were passed to the Pixhawk.”
Vision-Based Autonomous Ship Deck Landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Using Fractal ArUco Markers
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/6.2025-2345
