Flying batteries: In-flight battery switching to increase multirotor flight time

Jain, Karan P.; Mueller, Mark W.

doi:10.48550/arxiv.1909.10091

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Battery swapping at a fixed ground station has been presented in [5]- [7], and on a mobile ground base has been shown in [8]. Flying replacement batteries to a multirotor using other multirotors is discussed in [9].…”

Section: B Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Substituting this in (9) gives T > T * . However, this contradicts the assumption that T * is the optimal flight time, and therefore S * cannot be an optimal staging sequence.…”

Section: B Discrete Energy Storage Stagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The design of our battery switching circuit is inspired by [9]. Since our system is flying, we cannot afford to cut the power supply when switching from the first battery to the second battery.…”

Section: Battery Switching Circuitmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Staging energy sources to extend flight time of a multirotor UAV

Jain

Tang

Sreenath

et al. 2020

2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

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Energy sources such as batteries do not decrease in mass after consumption, unlike combustion-based fuels. We present the concept of staging energy sources, i.e. consuming energy in stages and ejecting used stages, to progressively reduce the mass of aerial vehicles in-flight which reduces power consumption, and consequently increases flight time. A flight time vs. energy storage mass analysis is presented to show the endurance benefit for multirotors on staging. We consider two specific problems in discrete staging -optimal order of staging given a certain number of energy sources, and optimal partitioning of a given energy storage mass budget into a given number of stages. We then derive results for two continuously staged cases -an internal combustion engine driving propellers, and a rocket engine. A fundamental flight time limit is seen for the internal combustion engine case, but not for the rocket engine, suggesting that rocket engines could be a better choice in certain scenarios. Lastly, we conduct flight experiments a on a custom two-stage battery-powered quadcopter. This quadcopter can eject a battery stage after consumption in-flight using a custom-designed mechanism, and continue hovering using the next stage. The experimental flight times are compared with those predicted from the analysis for our vehicle. The values match well which validates the presented staging analysis.

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Section: B Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Substituting this in (9) gives T > T * . However, this contradicts the assumption that T * is the optimal flight time, and therefore S * cannot be an optimal staging sequence.…”

Section: B Discrete Energy Storage Stagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Staging energy sources to extend flight time of a multirotor UAV

Jain

Tang

Sreenath

et al. 2020

2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, [6] designed a triangular quadrotor, which has one large rotor for lift and three small rotors for control, combining the energy efficiency of the large rotor and the fast control response of the small rotors; [7] designed a hybrid quadcopter which is able to do both aerial and ground locomotion. When the vehicle operates in the ground locomotion mode, it only needs to overcome the rolling resistance and uses much less power compared to flying; [8] proposed a quadcopter capable of in-flight battery switching.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In-flight range optimization of multicopters using multivariable extremum seeking with adaptive step size

Mueller

2020

Preprint

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Limited flight range is a common problem for multicopters. To alleviate this problem, we propose a method for finding the optimal speed and heading of a multicopter when flying a given path to achieve the longest flight range. Based on a novel multivariable extremum seeking controller with adaptive step size, the method (a) does not require any power consumption model of the vehicle, (b) can adapt to unknown disturbances, (c) can be executed online, and (d) converges faster than the standard extremum seeking controller with constant step size. We conducted indoor experiments to validate the effectiveness of this method under different payloads and initial conditions, and showed that it is able to converge more than 30% faster than the standard extremum seeking controller. This method is especially useful for applications such as package delivery, where the size and weight of the payload differ for different deliveries and the power consumption of the vehicle is hard to model.

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Flying batteries: In-flight battery switching to increase multirotor flight time

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Staging energy sources to extend flight time of a multirotor UAV

Staging energy sources to extend flight time of a multirotor UAV

In-flight range optimization of multicopters using multivariable extremum seeking with adaptive step size

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