UAV autonomous take - off and landing on a surface vessel

Motivations and general objectives: The possibility of employment of teams of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) within patrolling missions to be performed on the sea surface is currently receiving an increasing attention, by part of the scientific community, as they can be employed for the security and protection of marine areas, as well as humanitarian search and rescue reasons. The structure of a marine area patrolling system is currently conceived as a set of surface patrolling USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicles), each on transporting an UAV to be released to fly on the sea surface, as a wide extension of the sensing area of the associated USV. The efficiency and operability of this type of systems is mainly related with the capability of succeeding in taking off and landing on the USV, within as much as possible perturbed sea conditions. Some recent results have been achieved during the EU FP7 Echord experiment Riverwatch [1]. However, the USV was mainly navigating in rivers and thus was not subject to high roll and pitch variations.