Mechanical and Computational Energy Estimation of a Fixed-Wing Drone

Abstract

In this paper, we present a case study on the energy estimation of drones and derive a general modeling approach that estimates computational and mechanical energy separately. The mechanical energy model can easily be extended to other drones and is built using a Fourier series from a number of training flights. The computational energy model is more advanced as it handles heterogeneous hardware and incorporates a specification that defines the quality-of-service ranges for software components of the robotic system. The computational model is suitable for any mobile robot and is implemented in a modeling tool. The tool automatically generates an energy model from the specification by performing a set of empirical trials for selected configurations while approximating others. Information about the battery State of Charge is also included in the tool, hence allowing the evaluation of how different software configurations impact the battery. This approach can be used for dynamic mission assessment regarding different planning decisions. We here have demonstrated its ability to model the energy of a specific mission performed at varying levels of quality-of-service using a specific drone.

The TeamPlay Project: Analysing and Optimising Time, Energy, and Security for Cyber-Physical Systems

“…The second use case aims at increasing the quality of agricultural produce, relying on diverse sensing mechanisms and facilitating the transition towards precision agriculture (PA), by, e.g., detecting ground hazards. In both cases, fixed-wing drones, i.e., UAVs where propellers provide thrust, wings lift, and maneuvers are performed utilizing control surfaces [31], embed a computing payload connected to a camera [32]. Object detection is performed on the payload, and any results are transmitted to the ground station.…”

Energy-Aware Planning-Scheduling for Autonomous Aerial Robots

“…1 show the energy of a static coverage plan. It is relative to one flight of a series of flights for CPP in a precision agriculture use case [25]. Assuming the primitive paths have approximately the same length and the aerial robot has a fixed ground speed, the data exhibits periodic behavior with a constant set of frequencies, independent of the shift.…”

“…Our focus is on fixed wings, i.e., airborne robots where wings provide lift, propellers provide forward thrust, and control surfaces perform maneuvering. Here, motion and computations energies are within an order of magnitude from each other [25], [26]. There are other classes where planningscheduling energy awareness leads to irrelevant savings, i.e., when the motion energy contribution far outreaches the computations or vice-versa.…”