Modeling, Control System Design and Preliminary Experimental Verification of a Hybrid Power Unit Suitable for Multirotor UAVs

Abstract

A key drawback of multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with energy sources based solely on electrochemical batteries is related to the available on-board energy. Flight autonomy is typically limited to 15–30 min, with a flight duration upper limit of 90 min currently being achieved by high-performance battery-powered multirotor UAVs. Therefore, propulsion systems that utilize two or more different energy sources (hybrid power systems) may be considered as an alternative in order to increase the flight duration while retaining key performance benefits of battery energy storage use. The research presented in this work considers a multirotor UAV power unit, based on the internal combustion engine (ICE) powering an electricity generator (EG) connected to the common direct current (DC) bus in parallel with the lithium-polymer (LiPo) battery, and the respective modeling and identification of individual power unit subsystem, along with the dedicated control system design. Experimental verification of the proposed hybrid power unit control system has been carried out on the custom-build power unit prototype. The results show that the proposed control system combines the two power sources in a straightforward and effective way, with subsequent analysis showing that a two-fold energy density increase can be achieved with a hybrid energy source, consequently making it possible to achieve higher flight autonomy of the prospective multirotor (hover load around 1000–1400 W) equipped with such a hybrid system.