Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are typically driven by LiPo batteries. The batteries have their own dynamics, which changes during discharge. Classical approaches to altitude control assume timeinvariant system and therefore fail. Adaptive controllers require an identified system model which is often unavailable. Battery dynamics can be characterized and used for a battery model-based controller. This controller is useful in situations when no feedback from actuators (such as RPM or thrust) is available. After measuring the battery dynamics for two distinct types of batteries, a controller is designed and experimentally verified, showing a consistent performance during whole discharge test. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), Vertical TakeOff and Landing (VTOL), quadrotor, hexarotor, multirotor, altitude control, battery monitoring and modelling

The Cockpit Display of Traffic Information (CDTI) Enhanced

Lithium-Polymer (LiPo) batteries are becoming a popular choice for electric small low cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In case of a multirotor UAVs, a battery failure means a certain loss of the air frame. To fully utilize their potential and maintain mission safety, a monitoring system predicting battery behaviour is required. In this study a change in battery dynamics during discharge, and its effect of thrust produced by actuators is measured. Experiments simulating flight conditions are performed, and measured data are interpolated with double exponential and polynomial curves. An obvious similarity between the battery state-of-charge and produced thrust is observed. Due to conventional altitude controllers’ inability to cope well with changes in battery dynamics, a controller invariant to those changes is presented.

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