Andrei Cuenca
Censys Technologies - Senior Autonomy Engineer
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Dr. Andrei Cuenca is an Aerospace Autonomy Engineer at Censys Technologies Corporation, where he leads GNC development for autonomous UAS. He holds a PhD and MS in Aerospace Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and dual BS degrees in Mechanical and Electronics Engineering. His research focuses on geomagnetic navigation, with multiple publications and a granted U.S. patent in geomagnetic-aided navigation. He has contributed to FAA and Air Force funded research programs.
From Gazebo Simulation to Flight Operations: Developing a Production Precision Landing System
Autonomous VTOL aircraft require reliable, precision landing capabilities to enable real world applications from package delivery to infrastructure inspection. This session presents a complete open-source precision landing system built on ROS 2 and PX4, covering the full development lifecycle from high fidelity simulations to flight tested deployment.
We'll walk through how we developed, validated, and refined a multi-sensor perception and control stack that achieves centimeter-level landing accuracy using only commodity sensors and open-source tools. The system uses AprilTag fiducials for dock detection, fuses visible and infrared camera streams with a Kalman filter for robust pose estimation, and executes a phased descent state machine with real-time PID control.
The presentation covers:
Simulation first development: Building a Gazebo SITL environment with realistic sensor models
ROS 2 + PX4 integration: Bridging autopilot and perception via micro-XRCE-DDS,
Production deployment: Lessons learned scaling from lab prototype to field-tested hardware. Practical guidance on composing a production system from ROS packages, PX4 firmware, and community-contributed modules.
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