Design and Optimization of a Magnetic Catcher for UAV Landing on Disturbed Aquatic Surface Platforms

In this paper, a new capture system for UAV precision landing in a disturbed environment is proposed. Compared with the traditional visual guided landing methods, perching mechanism based methods, and tethered landing methods, the proposed system takes into account the stability during landing process and retains the high accessibility of the UAV. The proposed system consists of a winch subsystem and a magnetic catcher device. They establish an automatic tethered-UAV system for landing before the UAV touchdown. We analyzed the design principle as well as the feasibility of the magnetic catcher. An optimization problem is formulated to obtain a better layout of magnets on the catcher. The problem is relaxed based on interpolation simulation of attraction force. Experiments are conducted both in indoor and outdoor environments based on different UAV platforms respectively. The results validate that the catcher design and the capture system can achieve a successful landing in both cases.