Aerial Surveillance with Low-Altitude Long-Endurance Tethered Multirotor UAVs Using Photovoltaic Power Management System

Sunghun Jung, Yonghyeon Jo and Young-Joon Kim
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Sunghun Jung: Department of Electric Vehicle Engineering, Dongshin University, Jeollanam-do 58245, Korea
Yonghyeon Jo: Department of Energy Mechanical Facility, Dongshin University, Jeollanam-do 58245, Korea
Young-Joon Kim: Department of Electronic Engineering, Gachon University, Gyeonggi-do 13120, Korea

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: For a continuous surveillance mission using a swarm of multiple tethered low-altitude long-endurance (LALE) multirotor-type unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), we developed a 500 W class photovoltaic power management system (PPMS) which monitors voltage and current flows of photovoltaic (PV) panels, battery pack, and UAV and controls power flows to support UAV flight operation. In contract to a fixed-wing UAV, a tethered multirotor UAV can generate continuously varying closed-circuit television (CCTV) like ground map images by stitching incoming images though the operation range is limited. With an indoor flight experiment, we demonstrated the usefulness of the PPMS and proved operation integrity. According to the results, a total of six multirotor UAVs were required to continuously perform a surveillance mission for 5 h 46 min from 11:04 to 16:50.

Keywords: low-altitude long-endurance (LALE); photovoltaic power management system (PPMS); unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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