Navigation of an UAV Using a Created Map and Physical Markers Auburn REU on SMART UAVs 2018 Technical Report # CSSE 18-08 Jordon Garza University of Houston jkgarza@uh.edu Mario Greene Lawson State Community College mgreene3710@students.lawsonstate.edu Dr. Saˆ ad Biaz Auburn University biazaa@auburn.edu Dr. Richard Chapman Auburn University chapmro@auburn.edu August 17, 2018 Abstract Research and use of drones are constantly increasing as the world moves towards a more automated nature. A need for GPS-less travel and navigation is becoming a focus due to how common GPS can become unavailable either due to environmental reasons or purposeful jamming. This paper proposes a method of GPS-less homing by identifying a ”home base” location using marker recognition before the drone takes off, and then after flying around the drone will return to the marker using a map the drone creates as it flies. Included in the paper are the details of the implementation and method used, and an experimental analysis and reflection of the method. 1 Introduction Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) continue to be a very popular topic for research and devel- opment with many applications including military use, delivery and transport, and environmental surveying. The most obvious way of knowing where a drone is in a given environment and to provide directions and information about the environment it is flying in with the use of a Global Positioning System (GPS). However, due to various environmental effects and hazards as well as 1