Autonomous Area Scan & Landing on a Visual Target

Overview

• A search and land mission over a checkerboard arena: the drone scans the area in flight, detects the colored landing pad below, and transitions from search to a precision landing on it.
• Built on the MathWorks Minidrone Competition project structure, with custom scanning references, detection thresholds, and the search to landing handover logic.

Design & Build

• Search: A scanning flight pattern covers the arena while the downward camera watches for the target color.
• Detection: Color segmentation on the camera feed identifies the landing pad and its position under the drone.
• Landing: Once centered over the detection, the controller hands over to a vertical landing sequence.

Challenges

• Detecting a small colored pad from a moving, vibrating camera.
• Transitioning cleanly from search flight to a centered descent.

Result

• The drone scans, finds the spot, and lands on it autonomously in a single continuous flight.

Skills & Tools