An important application in the growing field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is in monitoring and inspection of high voltage power lines and electrical networks. The UAV-based monitoring method will save energy, simplify access to impassable or remote areas, reduce inspection cost, and automate the inspection process. However, the battery capacity of a medium scale drone limits their travel distance and mission duration. It is crucial to improve the energy feeding system of drones and overcome the battery capacity problem to foster the use of drones for routine monitoring operations. In this study, we focus on presenting wireless techniques available for drone mission duration improvement as well as discuss and practically examine the most feasible and reliable technique to charge UAV using power lines.

Wireless Charging Techniques for UAVs: A Review, Reconceptualization, and Extension

A major limitation of existing battery-powered quadrotor UAVs is their reduced flight endurance. To address this issue, by leveraging the electrical model of a brushless DC motor, we explicitly determine minimum-energy paths between a predefined initial and final configuration of a quadrotor by solving an optimal control problem with respect to the angular accelerations of the four propellers. As a variation on this problem, if the total energy consumption between two boundary states is fixed, minimum-time and/or minimum-control-effort trajectories are computed for the aerial vehicle. The theory is illustrated for the DJI Phantom 2 quadrotor in three realistic scenarios.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01276199/document

Minimum-energy path generation for a quadrotor UAV

Designing airspace for urban air mobility: A review of concepts and approaches

A new approach to calculating endurance in electric flight and comparing fuel cells and batteries

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly popular for applications such as inspections, delivery, agriculture, surveillance, and many more. It is estimated that, by 2040, UAVs/drones will become a mainstream delivery channel to satisfy the growing demand for parcel delivery. Though the UAVs are gaining interest in civil applications, the future of UAV charging is facing a set of vital concerns and open research challenges. Considering the case of parcel delivery, handling countless drones and their charging will become complex and laborious. The need for non-contact based multi-device charging techniques will be crucial in saving time and human resources. To efficiently address this issue, Wireless Power Transmission (WPT) for UAVs is a promising technology for multi-drone charging and autonomous handling of multiple devices. In the literature of the past five years, limited surveys were conducted for wireless UAV charging. Moreover, vital problems such as coil weight constraints, comparison between existing charging techniques, shielding methods and many other key issues are not addressed. This motivates the author in conducting this review for addressing the crucial aspects of wireless UAV charging. Furthermore, this review provides a comprehensive comparative study on wireless charging’s technical aspects conducted by prominent research laboratories, universities, and industries. The paper also discusses UAVs’ history, UAVs structure, categories of UAVs, mathematical formulation of coil and WPT standards for safer operation.

/pdf/a-review-on-uav-wireless-charging-fundamentals-applications-1auwpcaojg.pdf

Tan Chang

Papers

Improving Electric Powered UAVs’ Endurance by Incorporating Battery Dumping Concept