Power-Aware Emulation Environment For Long-Endurance Solar UAVs

ABSTRACT

This project aims to expand the theoretical and practical foundations for the design and integration of UAVs capable of real-time sensing and processing from an array of visual, acoustic and other sensors. This research targets a solar-powered UAV with a zero-carbon footprint that carries a high performance embedded computer capable of budgeting at run-time the available power between the propulsion/actuation subsystems and the computing and communication subsystems. To achieve this goal a rapid-prototyping environment is needed to enable fast and inexpensive development and testing. Additionally parameterizable mathematical power models are a necessity for power-aware path-planning. The joint evaluation of both parts proves the concept and sets a baseline for further development of the long-endurance solar UAV. In order to rapidly develop an autopilot system as well as embedded data processing algorithms, it is invaluable to have a high fidelity simulation of the applicable scenario. To this purpose, we developed an Emulation Environment (UAV-EE) that is not only able to combine several different simulations (flight, power, failure, etc.) but further emulates the interface to the embedded hardware. Finally, the integration of the proposed UAV power model into the emulation environment was experimentally validated using a fixed-wing UAV testbed.