Automatic Retracting and Paying-off System of Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

With the progress of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology, people have higher and higher requirements for the working endurance of rotary-wing UAVs. The tethered UAV can be wired to power through the tethered cable, which solves the problem of UAV endurance. During the descent of the UAV, the operator needs to manually rotate the take-up device for take-up manually. When the operator fails to put the redundant tied cables into the retracting and paying-off device timely, the redundant tied cables are prone to be entangled and knotted, causing potential safety hazards. To overcome the shortcomings of the above existing technologies, this project develops an automatic retracting and paying-off device based on the tethered UAV. The tension of the tethered cable is measured in real time by adding a tension monitoring unit to the traditional take-up device. According to the tension of the tethered cable and the takeoff and landing speed of the tethered UAV, the real-time automatic take-up of the tethered cable is realized.