Autonomous dynamic soaring

Boslough, M. B.

doi:10.1109/aero.2017.7943967

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In any case, the regularity of such flight behaviours makes them obvious candidates for application in gust-soaring sUAS. Even so, the growing body of research on autonomous dynamic soaring currently focuses on predictable wind gradients [112] rather than unpredictable gusts (but see [3,129]).…”

Section: Gust Soaringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This makes dynamic soaring practical close to the Earth's surface, without having to deviate too far from a path planned to meet other mission requirements. For this reason, autonomous dynamic soaring is now a highly active field of research [ 112 ], although the great majority of studies to date have been done in simulation rather than in technical implementation.…”

Section: Dynamic Soaring: Exploiting Gradients and Gustsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Opportunistic soaring by birds suggests new opportunities for atmospheric energy harvesting by flying robots

Abdel‐Rohman

Taylor

Watkins

et al. 2022

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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The use of flying robots (drones) is increasing rapidly, but their utility is limited by high power demand, low specific energy storage and poor gust tolerance. By contrast, birds demonstrate long endurance, harvesting atmospheric energy in environments ranging from cluttered cityscapes to open landscapes, coasts and oceans. Here, we identify new opportunities for flying robots, drawing upon the soaring flight of birds. We evaluate mechanical energy transfer in soaring from first principles and review soaring strategies encompassing the use of updrafts (thermal or orographic) and wind gradients (spatial or temporal). We examine the extent to which state-of-the-art flying robots currently use each strategy and identify several untapped opportunities including slope soaring over built environments, thermal soaring over oceans and opportunistic gust soaring. In principle, the energetic benefits of soaring are accessible to flying robots of all kinds, given atmospherically aware sensor systems, guidance strategies and gust tolerance. Hence, while there is clear scope for specialist robots that soar like albatrosses, or which use persistent thermals like vultures, the greatest untapped potential may lie in non-specialist vehicles that make flexible use of atmospheric energy through path planning and flight control, as demonstrated by generalist flyers such as gulls, kites and crows.

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Section: Gust Soaringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dynamic Soaring: Exploiting Gradients and Gustsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunistic soaring by birds suggests new opportunities for atmospheric energy harvesting by flying robots

Abdel‐Rohman

Taylor

Watkins

et al. 2022

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…Besides having a vast amount of dynamic soaring related work done in a simulation environment, there have been very limited real-flight experiments presented. Mark Boslough [11,12] demonstrated dynamic soaring flights by using custom built expanded polypropylene foam flying wings, called DS Beast. Custom data logging devices were designed and built by Jennings Engineering Inc. to record the flight data.…”

Section: Related Research On Dynamic Soaring Flight Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flight Testing of Dynamic Soaring Part-1 : Leeward Inclined Circle Trajectory

Bronz

Gavrilovic

Drouin

et al. 2021

AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum

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This paper presents flight experiments of dynamic soaring as an inclined circle trajectory on the leeward side of a ridge. Energy extraction through dynamic soaring can improve the range and endurance performance of fixed-wing vehicles on certain missions such as ocean monitoring, or flying over orographic wind sources. Real-life application of autonomous dynamic soaring presents challenges such as poor and limited sensor measurements, limited computation, estimation of the dynamic wind field. In this study, we assessed the feasibility of dynamic soaring in the shear layer with a small autonomous glider and showed the positive power contributing segments which are ascending into the positive wind gradient, and descending into the negative wind gradient. Flight test results revealed that, without any complex trajectories, on average, the glider can extract close to 60% of its required power from dynamic soaring. Additionally, a 6-DOF simulation environment is developed with a realistic aircraft model for the initial simulation of advanced trajectories. The results from the flight tests will serve as a database for the researchers to close the gap between simulations and the real flights to achieve a fully autonomous dynamic soaring.

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