Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
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 of staging to multirotors. 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 a continuously staged case of an internal combustion engine driving propellers. Notably, we show that a multirotor powered by internal combustion has an upper limit on achievable flight time independent of the available fuel mass. Lastly, we validate the analysis with flight experiments 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 match well with those predicted from the analysis for our vehicle. We achieve a 19% increase in flight time using the batteries in two stages as compared to a single stage. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
2020 | 10.1109/IROS45743.2020.9341804 | 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) |
Keywords | DocType | ISSN |
energy sources,multirotor,combustion-based fuels,aerial vehicles in-flight,flight time,energy storage mass analysis,continuously staged case,internal combustion engine driving propellers,achievable flight time,available fuel mass,flight experiments,custom two-stage battery-powered quadcopter,battery stage,experimental flight times,energy storage mass budget | Conference | 2153-0858 |
ISBN | Citations | PageRank |
978-1-7281-6213-3 | 0 | 0.34 |
References | Authors | |
0 | 4 | |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| P. Jain | 1 | 67 | 21.48 |
| Tang Jerry | 2 | 0 | 0.34 |
| Koushil Sreenath | 3 | 358 | 33.41 |
| Mark W. Müller | 4 | 52 | 8.72 |