Real-Time Estimation of Remaining UAV Flight Time Based on the Total Energy Balance

• Autor(a) principal: Moutinho, Pedro Alexandre Lourenço
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/8137
• topic: Balanço Energético; Integração de Sistemas; Plataforma de Código Aberto; Tempo Remanescente de Voo; Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Aeronáutica

Unmanned aerial vehictes (UAV's), initially used for military applications, have become increas¬ingly attractive for civilian purposes. The use af this type af aircraft has grown exponentially in recent years, both for professional and recreational purposes, due to the numerous advantages they presento However, in general UAV's are devoid af safety mechanisms essential to their operation , so it is extremety important to de'finelimplement solutions to increase the safety af this type af equipment. This way and integrated in the "Drones' Safe Flight -Gestão de energia, planeamento de missão e deteção de obstáculos em voo" project the present work describes the development and validation af an algorithm implemented in an open source platform for unmanned aerial vehictes (Ardupilot) capable of estimating in real time the energy balance of a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), in order to catculate the remaining run time (RRT). For this, at an initial phase the energy formulation associated to the type of airc raft under study was carried out. After describing the theoretical component present in the algorithm, the method-ology and structure were approached where the sequence of events necessary to the estimation of the energy state was reproduced. ln addition to the aforementioned capabilities, the trans¬mission of relevant data for the operation of the airc raft via telemetry and consequent addition to the ground station into a numerical and g,raphical way was carried out. Complementing the data packets sent via telemetry (MAVlINK), the on-board video streaming was implemented and messages with indication of remaining flight time were added. Regarding the validation of the algorithm, ali the necessary systems were 'integrated into two distinct aircraft, each having performed several flights in order to evaluate the behaviour of the group aircraftlalgorithm. Finally, the results were presented which have shown a good response capacity in transient situations, as well as the attenuation of the noise coming from the sensors.