Abstract
For a continuous surveillance mission using a swarm of multiple tethered low-altitude long-endurance (LALE) multirotor-type unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), we developed a 500 W class photovoltaic power management system (PPMS) which monitors voltage and current flows of photovoltaic (PV) panels, battery pack, and UAV and controls power flows to support UAV flight operation. In contract to a fixed-wing UAV, a tethered multirotor UAV can generate continuously varying closed-circuit television (CCTV) like ground map images by stitching incoming images though the operation range is limited. With an indoor flight experiment, we demonstrated the usefulness of the PPMS and proved operation integrity. According to the results, a total of six multirotor UAVs were required to continuously perform a surveillance mission for 5 h 46 min from 11:04 to 16:50.
Highlights
Technologies related with low-altitude long-endurance (LALE), medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE), and high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently become crucial due to various desires, including, in particular, internet coverage extension to remote areas having no mobile network coverage [1]
Excluded since battery pack of each UAV is necessary for the success of the continuous surveillance mission
We performed an indoor flight experiment to demonstrate the usefulness of the photovoltaic power management system (PPMS) and proved the operation integrity of the PPMS
Summary
Technologies related with low-altitude long-endurance (LALE), medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE), and high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently become crucial due to various desires, including, in particular, internet coverage extension to remote areas having no mobile network coverage [1]. Lee and et al developed a 200 W class LALE HEPS UAV using an active power management system (PMS), in which the active PMS limits boundaries of each energy source to maintain a target state of charge (SOC) of the battery pack [4]. Most of the abovementioned studies tried to build a fixed-wing type LALE UAV which uses stationary alternating current (AC) loads and requires a long runway and a large area to operate. From this perspective, we designed the tethered multirotor-type LALE UAV swarming system for, the continuous aerial surveillance without any single human intervention using pure solar energy.
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