Today’s off-the-shelf, inexpensive Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are an emerging breed of devices that promise to reshape tomorrow’s search and rescue landscape. Multiple identical drones can be utilized to achieve more complex tasks when arranged in a swarm formation. In either the single-drone or swarm configuration, these Lithium Polymer (LiPo) battery-powered machines can only stay in the air for a brief period of time (usually between 10 and 30 minutes) due to the high power consumption of their motors. For example, drones weighing only 200 to 600 grams can consume between 100–600 Watts. Most search-and-rescue operations last for days, even weeks, rendering these inexpensive drones impractical.A novel charge replenishment mechanism is proposed in this paper that allows a swarm of drones to stay in the air perpetually. This is achieved by employing a fleet of drones much larger than the flying swarm in order to continuously replace and charge energy-depleted drones. The required fleet size for various drone models is calculated analytically and through a simulation. A rule-of-thumb formula is derived based on Queuing Theory and Energy Conversation to confirm the feasibility of this proposal with simulation results.
Perpetual Flight for UAV Drone Swarms Using Continuous Energy Replenishment
01.11.2018
2546432 byte
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Particle-dynamics modeling of drone swarms
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2023
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