cs.CVJun 30, 2026

Robust Autonomous UAV Landing on Maritime Platforms via Multimodal Agentic AI and Active Wave Compensation

Authors: Francisco S. NevesPedro N. PereiraRaul D. S. G. CampilhoAndry M. Pinto

Organizations: Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP) · Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP)

Abstract

Autonomous aerial inspection of marine infrastructure is frequently compromised by stochastic sea states, introducing risks of high-kinetic impacts, post-landing toppling, and sensory occlusion. This paper proposes a decoupled, multi-vehicle landing framework synchronizing an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) equipped with a 3-RPU stabilized platform with a robust Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The architecture utilizes two independent Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agents: a Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) agent providing high-frequency wave-motion compensation for the landing deck, and a multimodal RL agent for the UAVs final approach. Evaluated in high-fidelity maritime simulations, the system achieved a 100% landing success rate across 15 trials in wave states varying from calm to rough. Results show a mean stabilization efficacy of 87.8%, maintaining the landing surface within 1 degree of the horizontal plane for 96% of the mission duration in rough conditions, effectively contributing to safer landings.

Explore similar work

CardsList
  1. Vision-Based Agile Landing on Turbulent Waters

    May 22, 2026Dimosthenis Angelis, Leonard Bauersfeld, Davide Scaramuzza +1Unmanned Aerial VehiclesModel Predictive Control