Modeling and Application of Dynamic Soaring by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

Albatross have a significant gliding ability called dynamic soaring. In the bionic study, dynamic soaring has a great potential to enhance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) flight range and endurance. The previous study on dynamic soaring mainly focused on the energy harvesting mechanism, trajectory optimization, and flight test. However, the longtime optimization became the challenge of the UAV dynamic soaring application. Similarly, due to the difficulty of the dynamic soaring test flight, both the feasibility of dynamic soaring application and the energy harvesting mechanism model’s accuracy lack validation. This paper proposes a new method to give a dynamic soaring trajectory, and a flight simulation program is built to realize the dynamic soaring flight test. The results show that the new method can guide the UAV to achieve dynamic soaring and verify the improvement of its flight performance through dynamic soaring. Meanwhile, the accuracy of the energy harvesting mechanism model is verified. The results indicate the indirect way to achieve the UAV dynamic soaring and provide a flight test foundation for a profound dynamic soaring mechanism study.