Long‐duration fully autonomous operation of rotorcraft unmanned aerial systems for remote‐sensing data acquisition

Introducing our fully autonomous rotorcraft unmanned aerial system (UAS) - the solution to long-term observation missions in remote locations without any human intervention. With limited flight times of traditional UAS and the need for humans in the loop, our platform offers a solution for uninterrupted operations over days or weeks. Our technology addresses two critical areas: platform autonomy and vision-based precision landing for automated energy replenishment. Our high-level autonomous decision-making hierarchy and vision-based landing system uses AprilTag fiducials to estimate landing pad pose for accuracy. We have conducted indoor and outdoor experiments, where the UAS executed 16, 48, and 22 flights with a flying-to-charging ratio of 1 to 10. With no human interaction required, this is the first quadrotor system to operate long-term outdoors.