Affiliation:
1. MAVLab, Delft University of Technology, Kluyverweg 1, 2629HS Delft, The Netherlands
Abstract
Applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are often limited by flight endurance. To address the limitation of endurance, we propose a regenerative soaring method in this paper. The atmospheric energy from updrafts generated by obstacles such as hills and ships can be harvested by UAVs using a regenerative electric drivetrain. With fixed-wing aircraft, the vehicle can hover with specific wind conditions, and the battery can be recharged in the air while wind hovering. In order to research the feasibility of this regenerative soaring method, we present a model to estimate hovering locations and the amount of extractable power using the proposed method. The resulting modular regeneration simulation tool can efficiently determine the possible hovering locations and provide an estimate of the power regeneration potential for each hovering location, given the UAVs aerodynamic characteristics and wind-field conditions. Furthermore, a working regenerative drivetrain test setup was constructed and characterized that showcased promising conversion efficiencies and can be incorporated into existing UAVs easily.
Publisher
World Scientific Pub Co Pte Ltd
Subject
Control and Optimization,Aerospace Engineering,Automotive Engineering,Control and Systems Engineering
Cited by
1 articles.
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1. Autonomous Control for Orographic Soaring of Fixed-Wing UAVs;2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA);2023-05-29