Automatic Battery Replacement System for UAVs: Analysis and Design

Future Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) are expected to be nearly autonomous and composed of heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). While most of the current research focuses on UAV avionics and control algorithms, ground task automation has come to the attention of researchers during the past few years. Ground task automation not only relieves This paper is largely reprinted from the paper of the same title in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems 2011 (ICUAS‘11), May 2011. The Proof of Theorem 1 and reorganization leading to Section 5 are new. K. A. O. Suzuki Mechanical Engineering Department, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 305-701, Korea e-mail: [email protected] P. Kemper Filho Electrical Engineering Department, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 305-701, Korea e-mail: [email protected] J. R. Morrison (B) Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 305-701, Korea e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://xS3D.kaist.edu human operators, but may also expand the UAS operation area, improve system coverage and enable operation in risky environments without posing a threat to humans. We propose a model to evaluate the coverage of a given UAS. We also compare different solutions for various modules of an automated battery replacement system for UAVs. In addition, we propose a ground station capable of swapping a UAV’s batteries, followed by a discussion of prototype components and tests of some of the prototype modules. The proposed platform is well-suited for high-coverage requirements and is capable of handling a heterogeneous UAV fleet.