CEAS EuroGNC 2026
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Autonomous UAV Landing and Isolated Battery Recharging with Seamless Power Switching
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| Ibrahim Khan |
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada. | | Dennis Miklos |
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada. | | Guangjun Liu |
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada. |
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| Abstract:
In this paper, we present an autonomous landing and recharging system with a proposed technique to electrically isolate the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) battery during recharging while maintaining continuity of power to the UAV avionics. This ensures that the full charging current is directed solely to the battery - enabling safer recharging of the battery, while components such as the flight controller, companion computer, and other peripherals are continuously powered through a separate power path. We achieve this by developing a power distribution board (PDB) with integrated PowerPath controllers to seamlessly switch avionic loads from the onboard battery in the UAV to the charging source in the station without interruption upon docking. The overall system utilizes an omnidirectional station equipped with a contact-based interface and bidirectional communication to monitor and control the charging process. To support autonomous docking, a vision-based detection and localization approach is employed to ensure the precise alignment necessary for contact-based recharging. Experimental results have confirmed smooth power switching and consistent battery recharging.
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| Keywords: UAV; Landing and Recharging Station; Autonomous Recharging; LiPo Battery; Battery Management System |
 View PDF CEAS-GNC-2026-079 doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-079 |
| Ibrahim Khan, Dennis Miklos, Guangjun Liu: Autonomous UAV Landing and Isolated Battery Recharging with Seamless Power Switching. Proceedings of the 2026 CEAS EuroGNC conference. Madrid, Spain. May 2026. doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-079.
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| BibTeX entry (UTF-8):
@Incollection{CEAS-GNC-2026-079,
author = {Khan, Ibrahim and Miklos, Dennis and Liu, Guangjun},
title = {Autonomous UAV Landing and Isolated Battery Recharging with Seamless Power Switching},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 {CEAS EuroGNC} conference},
address = {Madrid, Spain},
month = may,
year = {2026},
doi = {10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-079}
}
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