DART drone lands on trucks at 110 km/h in closed-course tests
Researchers in Canada have developed a drone that can land on a moving truck at speeds up to 110 km/h without the vehicle slowing down. In road tests, the aircraft completed 38 successful landings on a platform mounted to the back of a pickup traveling at highway speed.
The system, called DART for Direct Approach Rapid Touchdown, was developed at the University of Sherbrooke's Createk Research Lab. The 2.4-kg quadcopter is designed for a problem that has limited mobile drone operations for years: returning to or resupplying moving ground teams without forcing vehicles to stop.
Landing on a fast-moving vehicle is difficult for several reasons. Strong aerodynamic drag pushes a multirotor into a steep forward pitch, raising the risk that its propellers could strike the roof during touchdown. At the same time, rigid landing gear hitting a rigid surface at highway speed can break on impact or cause the drone to bounce and flip.
DART addresses those limits with a combination of flight control and hardware changes. It first tracks the target vehicle from above, then performs a rapid near-vertical descent. The fast dive helps the drone match the vehicle's motion while reducing exposure to gusts and other disturbances that can upset a slower approach. Just before contact, the aircraft executes a pitch-leveling maneuver so its propellers clear the landing surface and all four landing legs share the load. At touchdown, it switches into reverse thrust, pressing itself down to reduce sliding. Its landing gear also uses friction-based shock absorbers that dissipate kinetic energy without producing a rebound.
The result is a wider and more robust landing envelope for drones operating around moving vehicles. The approach could support military reconnaissance, supply delivery to mobile teams, and battery-saving operations in which drones hitch rides on trucks or buses moving in the same direction. The research was published in the Journal of Field Robotics, and it points to UAV missions that can stay mobile instead of waiting for a safe place to stop.