Autonomous take-off and Landing technologies to allow UAVs to operated in tactical battlefield and integrate into National Air Space

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ( commonly known as a drone) is an aircraft without a human pilot on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS); which include a UAV, a ground-based controller, and a system of communications between the two. The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by a human operator or autonomously by onboard computers referred to as an autopilot.

These vehicles have been used in several types of applications like surveillance, infrastructure inspection, fire fighting, search and rescue, agriculture, border patrol, scientific experiments, and mapping. Communication, sensor and control techniques have evolved over the past few decade that has led to the development of a wide range of UAVs varying in shape,size, configuration, and characteristics. The common types of UAVs are fixed wing UAVs, Quad-rotors and helicopters at different scales (large UAVs or miniature vehicles or microaerial vehicle).

All these applications depend on advancements in vehicle autonomy that will fully automate many of the vehicles functions, including route planning, navigation, obstacle avoidance, landing zone evaluation, autonomous take-off and autonomous landing.  Furthermore, some of the applications mentioned above, such as package retrieval, require a high level of accuracy so as to make sure the UAV lands exactly on the desired target.

UAVs have become indispensable to modern militaries in providing intelligence, near-real time reconnaissance and surveillance to commanders, and offering warfighters greater battlespace awareness. They have proven effective in electronic combat support, battle damage assessment and even in national security operations like border surveillance, low intensity conflict and guerilla / terrorist warfare. The ability to take-off and land in tactical cluttered environments will allow UAS to be used more extensively in support of forward military units.

In September 2019, a Cessna 172—a four-seat, single-engine plane that is among the most common aircraft model in existence—taxied to a runway at an airport south of San Jose, took off on its own, flew for 15 minutes, and then landed at the same airport, all without a single person on board.