This paper introduces a system designed for tight collaboration between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) in harsh maritime conditions characterized by large waves. This onboard UAV system aims to enhance collaboration with USVs for following and landing tasks under such challenging conditions. The main contribution of our system is the novel mathematical USV model, describing the movement of the USV in 6 degrees of freedom on a wavy water surface, which is used to estimate and predict USV states. The estimator fuses data from multiple global and onboard sensors, ensuring accurate USV state estimation. The predictor computes future USV states using the novel mathematical USV model and the last estimated states. The estimated and predicted USV states are forwarded into a trajectory planner that generates a UAV trajectory for following the USV or landing on its deck, even in harsh environmental conditions. The proposed approach was verified in numerous simulations and deployed to the real world, where the UAV was able to follow the USV and land on its deck repeatedly.

翻译：本文介绍了一种专为在恶劣海况（以大浪为特征）下实现无人机与无人水面艇紧密协同而设计的系统。该机载无人机系统旨在增强在此类挑战性条件下与无人水面艇进行跟随与降落任务的协作能力。我们系统的主要贡献在于提出了新颖的无人水面艇数学模型，该模型描述了无人水面艇在波浪水面上的六自由度运动，用于估计和预测无人水面艇的状态。该估计器融合了来自多个全局与机载传感器的数据，确保了无人水面艇状态估计的准确性。预测器则利用该新颖的数学模型及最新的估计状态来计算无人水面艇的未来状态。估计和预测出的无人水面艇状态被输入到一个轨迹规划器中，该规划器生成无人机轨迹，用于跟随无人水面艇或在其甲板上降落，即使在恶劣的环境条件下也能实现。所提出的方法在大量仿真中得到了验证，并已部署到现实世界中，无人机能够成功跟随无人水面艇并多次在其甲板上降落。