{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,4]],"date-time":"2026-08-04T00:46:47Z","timestamp":1785804407237,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":32,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,22]],"date-time":"2022-01-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1642809600000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,22]],"date-time":"2022-01-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1642809600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["J Intell Robot Syst"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,2]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:p>The technology of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has increasingly become part of many civil and research applications in recent years. UAVs offer high-quality aerial imaging and the ability to perform quick, flexible and in-depth data acquisition over an area of interest. While navigating in remote environments, UAVs need to be capable of autonomously landing on complex terrains for security, safety and delivery reasons. This is extremely challenging as the structure of these terrains is often unknown, and no prior knowledge can be leveraged. In this study, we present a vision-based autonomous landing system for rotor wing UAVs equipped with a stereo camera and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). The landing site detection algorithm introduces and evaluates several factors including terrain\u2019s flatness, inclination and steepness. Considering these features we compute map metrics that are used to obtain a landing-score map, based on which we detect candidate landing sites. The 3D reconstruction of the scene is acquired by stereo processing and the pose of the UAV at any given time is estimated by fusing raw data from the inertial sensors with the pose obtained from stereo ORB-SLAM2. Real-world trials demonstrate successful landing in unknown and complex terrains such as suburban and forest areas.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s10846-021-01544-6","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,22]],"date-time":"2022-01-22T11:02:52Z","timestamp":1642849372000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":18,"title":["Landing Site Detection for Autonomous Rotor Wing UAVs Using Visual and Structural Information"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"104","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0520-9658","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Evangelos","family":"Chatzikalymnios","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7617-227X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Konstantinos","family":"Moustakas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"1544_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yubo, L., et al: Survey of UAV autonomous landing based on vision processing. In: Advances in Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems, pp 300\u2013311, Springer International Publishing (2021)","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-57796-4_29"},{"issue":"1","key":"1544_CR2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"141","DOI":"10.1007\/s10846-017-0483-z","volume":"87","author":"C Kanellakis","year":"2017","unstructured":"Kanellakis, C., Nikolakopoulos, G.: Survey on computer vision for UAVs: Current developments and trends. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems 87(1), 141\u2013168 (2017)","journal-title":"Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems"},{"key":"1544_CR3","unstructured":"Masselli, A., Zell, A.: A novel marker based tracking method for position and attitude control of mavs. In: Proceedings of International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Flight Competition (IMAV) (2012)"},{"key":"1544_CR4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mebarki, R., Lippiello, V., Siciliano, B.: Autonomous landing of rotary-wing aerial vehicles by image-based visual servoing in gps-denied environments. In: 2015 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR), pp. 1\u20136, IEEE (2015)","DOI":"10.1109\/SSRR.2015.7443009"},{"key":"1544_CR5","unstructured":"Lange, S., Sunderhauf, N., Protzel, P.: A vision based onboard approach for landing and position control of an autonomous multirotor uav in gps-denied environments. In: 2009 International Conference on Advanced Robotics. pp. 1\u20136, IEEE (2009)"},{"key":"1544_CR6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"645","DOI":"10.1007\/s10846-018-0933-2","volume":"95","author":"C Patruno","year":"2019","unstructured":"Patruno, C., Nitti, M., Petitti, A., et al.: A Vision-Based Approach for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Landing. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems 95, 645\u2013664 (2019). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10846-018-0933-2","journal-title":"Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems"},{"key":"1544_CR7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hu, B., Lu, L., Mishra, S.: Fast, safe and precise landing of a quadrotor on an oscillating platform, In: 2015 American Control Conference (ACC), pp. 3836\u20133841, IEEE (2015)","DOI":"10.1109\/ACC.2015.7171928"},{"issue":"1","key":"1544_CR8","first-page":"23","volume":"127","author":"SM Chaves","year":"2015","unstructured":"Chaves, S.M., Wolcott, R.W., Eustice, R.M.: Neec research: Toward gps-denied landing of unmanned aerial vehicles on ships at sea. Naval Engineers Journal 127(1), 23\u201335 (2015)","journal-title":"Naval Engineers Journal"},{"issue":"2","key":"1544_CR9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"369","DOI":"10.1007\/s10846-016-0399-z","volume":"85","author":"O Araar","year":"2017","unstructured":"Araar, O., Aouf, N., Vitanov, I.: Vision based autonomous landing of multirotor uav on moving platform. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems 85(2), 369\u2013384 (2017)","journal-title":"Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems"},{"issue":"5","key":"1544_CR10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"172988141773108","DOI":"10.1177\/1729881417731083","volume":"14","author":"C Patruno","year":"2017","unstructured":"Patruno, C., et al.: Helipad detection for accurate UAV pose estimation by means of a visual sensor. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems 14(5), 1729881417731083 (2017)","journal-title":"International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems"},{"key":"1544_CR11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yang, S., Scherer, S. A., Zell, A.: An onboard monocular vision system for & Robotic Systems. 69, (1-4), 499\u2013515 (2013)","DOI":"10.1007\/s10846-012-9749-7"},{"key":"1544_CR12","unstructured":"Scherer, S.A., Dube, D., Komma, P., Masselli, A., Zell, A.: Robust, real-time number sign detection on a mobile outdoor robot. In: ECMR, pp. 145\u2013152 (2011)"},{"key":"1544_CR13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lebedev, I., Erashov, A., Shabanova, A.: Accurate autonomous uav landing using vision-based detection of aruco-marker. In: International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Robotics, pp. 179\u2013188, Springer (2020)","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-60337-3_18"},{"issue":"2","key":"1544_CR14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"171","DOI":"10.1177\/1756829318757470","volume":"10","author":"L Yu","year":"2018","unstructured":"Yu, L., et al.: Deep learning for vision-based micro aerial vehicle autonomous landing. International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles 10(2), 171\u2013185 (2018)","journal-title":"International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles"},{"key":"1544_CR15","unstructured":"Pluckter, K., Scherer, S.: Precision UAV landing in unstructured environments. International Symposium on Experimental Robotics. Springer, Cham (2018)"},{"key":"1544_CR16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Clement, L., Kelly, J., Barfoot, T.D.: Monocular visual teach and repeat aided by local ground planarity. In: Field and Service Robotics, pp. 547\u2013561. Springer, Cham (2016)","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-27702-8_36"},{"key":"1544_CR17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fraczek, P., Mora, A., Kryjak T.: Embedded vision system for automated drone landing site detection. International Conference on Computer Vision and Graphics. Springer, Cham (2018)","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-00692-1_35"},{"issue":"5","key":"1544_CR18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"73","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics7050073","volume":"7","author":"T Yang","year":"2018","unstructured":"Yang, T., Li, P., Zhang, H., Li, J., Li, Z.: Monocular vision slam-based uav autonomous landing in emergencies and unknown environments. Electronics 7(5), 73 (2018)","journal-title":"Electronics"},{"key":"1544_CR19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Forster, C., Faessler, M., Fontana, F., Werlberger, M., Scaramuzza, D.: Continuous on-board monocular-vision-based elevation mapping applied to autonomous landing of micro aerial vehicles, In: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 111\u2013118, IEEE (2015)","DOI":"10.1109\/ICRA.2015.7138988"},{"key":"1544_CR20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Pizzoli, M., Forster, C., Scaramuzza, D.: Remode: Probabilistic, monocular dense reconstruction in real time. In: 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 2609\u20132616, IEEE (2014)","DOI":"10.1109\/ICRA.2014.6907233"},{"key":"1544_CR21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fankhauser, P., Bloesch, M., Gehring, C., Hutter, M., Siegwart, R.: Robot-centric elevation mapping with uncertainty estimates. In: Mobile Service Robotics. World Scientific, pp. 433\u2013440 (2014)","DOI":"10.1142\/9789814623353_0051"},{"issue":"6","key":"1544_CR22","first-page":"1091","volume":"25","author":"AE Johnson","year":"2002","unstructured":"Johnson, A.E., et al.: Lidar-based hazard avoidance for safe landing on mars. JGCD 25(6), 1091\u20131099 (2002)","journal-title":"JGCD"},{"issue":"3","key":"1544_CR23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2545","DOI":"10.1109\/LRA.2018.2809962","volume":"3","author":"T Hinzmann","year":"2018","unstructured":"Hinzmann, T., Stastny, T., Cadena, C., Siegwart, R., Gilitschenski, I.: Free LSD: Prior-free visual landing site detection for autonomous planes. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 3(3), 2545\u20132552 (2018). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/LRA.2018.2809962","journal-title":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters"},{"key":"1544_CR24","unstructured":"Mittal, M., Valada, A., Burgard, W.: Vision-based autonomous landing in catastrophe-struck environments. arXiv:1809.05700 (2018)"},{"issue":"5","key":"1544_CR25","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1255","DOI":"10.1109\/TRO.2017.2705103","volume":"33","author":"R Mur-Artal","year":"2017","unstructured":"Mur-Artal, R., Tard\u00f3s, J.D.: ORB-SLAM2: An open-source SLAM system for monocular, stereo, and RGB-D cameras. IEEE Transactions on Robotics 33(5), 1255\u20131262 (2017). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/TRO.2017.2705103","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics"},{"key":"1544_CR26","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"263","DOI":"10.1007\/s10846-008-9235-4","volume":"53","author":"F Bonin-Font","year":"2008","unstructured":"Bonin-Font, F., Ortiz, A., Oliver, G.: Visual Navigation for Mobile Robots: A Survey. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems 53, 263 (2008)","journal-title":"Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems"},{"key":"1544_CR27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Haddadi, S.J., Castelan, E.B.: Visual-inertial fusion for indoor autonomous navigation of a quadrotor using ORB-SLAM. In: 2018 Latin American Robotic Symposium, 2018 Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (SBR) and 2018 Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE), pp. 106\u2013111, IEEE Xplore (2018)","DOI":"10.1109\/LARS\/SBR\/WRE.2018.00028"},{"key":"1544_CR28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lynen, S., et al.: A robust and modular multi-sensor fusion approach applied to MAV navigation. In: 2013 IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp 3923\u20133929, IEEE Xplore (2013)","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2013.6696917"},{"key":"1544_CR29","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","unstructured":"Julier, S.J., Uhlmann, J.K.: New extension of the Kalman filter to nonlinear systems. In: Proc. SPIE 3068, Signal Processing, Sensor Fusion, and Target Recognition VI, (28 July 1997), https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1117\/12.280797 (1997)","DOI":"10.1117\/12.280797"},{"key":"1544_CR30","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","unstructured":"Wan, E.E.A., Van Der Merwe, R.: The unscented Kalman filter for nonlinear estimation. In: Proceedings of the IEEE 2000 Adaptive Systems for Signal Processing, Communications, and Control Symposium (Cat. No.00EX373), Lake Louise, AB, Canada, pp. 153\u2013158 (2000). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/ASSPCC.2000.882463","DOI":"10.1109\/ASSPCC.2000.882463"},{"key":"1544_CR31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"W\u00f6hler, C.: 3D computer vision: efficient methods and applications. Springer Science & Business Media (2012)","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4471-4150-1"},{"key":"1544_CR32","unstructured":"Point Cloud Library (1.11.1-dev), Conditional Euclidean Clustering [source code]. https:\/\/pointclouds.org\/documentation\/tutorials\/cluster_extraction.html"}],"container-title":["Journal of Intelligent &amp; Robotic Systems"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s10846-021-01544-6.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10846-021-01544-6\/fulltext.html","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s10846-021-01544-6.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,9,16]],"date-time":"2024-09-16T19:00:40Z","timestamp":1726513240000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/10.1007\/s10846-021-01544-6"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,22]]},"references-count":32,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,2]]}},"alternative-id":["1544"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10846-021-01544-6","relation":{},"ISSN":["0921-0296","1573-0409"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0921-0296","type":"print"},{"value":"1573-0409","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,22]]},"assertion":[{"value":"14 April 2021","order":1,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"27 November 2021","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"22 January 2022","order":3,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Declarations"}},{"value":"All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Conflicts of interest"}}],"article-number":"27"}}