V-REP & ROS Testbed for Design, Test, and Tuning of a Quadrotor Vision Based Fuzzy Control System for Autonomous Landing

This paper focuses on the use of the Virtual Robotics Experimental Platform (V-REP) and the Robotics Operative System (ROS) working in parallel for design, test, and tuning of a vision based control system to command an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Here, is presented how to configure the V-REP, and ROS to work in parallel, and how to use the developed packages in ROS for the pose estimation based on vision and for the design and use of a fuzzy logic control system. It is also shown in this paper a novel vision based fuzzy control approach for the autonomous landing task on a static and on a moving platform. The control system is based on four fuzzy logic controllers (FLC) working in parallel on an external control loop based on the visual information. All the controllers were designed and tuned to command the vertical, longitudinal, lateral, and heading velocities of the UAV.