A Novel Energy Harvester for Powering Small UAVs: Performance Analysis, Model Validation and Flight Results

Citroni, Rocco; Paolo, Franco Di; Livreri, Patrizia

doi:10.3390/s19081771

Cited by 54 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The main theme of the research on energy harvester sensors is represented by the low amount of energy. We can therefore distinguish some articles in which the interest of research is on the energy source and the transducer [1][2][3][4], from articles in which the interest is on how to maximize this extracted energy [5,6] or on how it is possible to use these small quantities of energy [7][8][9].…”

Section: Summary Of Special Issue Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Energy Harvester Sensing

Viola

2020

Sensors

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Section: Summary Of Special Issue Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Citroni at al. in [8] propose research of which the goals are to explore and develop new strategies to extend mission parameters of a new class of unmanned vehicles, named micro air vehicles (MAVs). They presented a complete analytical model, identifying different factors, which determine the MAV power consumption.…”

Section: Summary Of Special Issue Papersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Harvester Sensing

Viola

2020

Sensors

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“…These innovations are going to cause a surge in power consumption in the near future, which requires to explore more ways and methods for energy generation. To this end, energy harvesting is a straightforward and elegant approach for powering on-board batteries rather than frequent battery replenishment, in order to maintain a perpetual power supply [11,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing a Wind Energy Harvester for Connected Vehicles in Green Cities

et al. 2021

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Electric vehicles (EVs) have recently gained momentum as an integral part of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) when authorities started expanding their low emission zones (LEZs) in an effort to build green cities with low carbon footprints. Energy is one of the key requirements of EVs, not only to support the smooth and sustainable operation of EVs, but also to ensure connectivity between the vehicle and the infrastructure in the critical times such as disaster recovery operation. In this context, renewable energy sources (such as wind energy) have an important role to play in the automobile sector towards designing energy-harvesting electric vehicles (EH-EV) to mitigate energy reliance on the national grid. In this article, a novel approach is presented to harness energy from a small-scale wind turbine due to vehicle mobility to support the communication primitives in electric vehicles which enable plenty of IoV use cases. The harvested power is then processed through a regulation circuitry to consequently achieve the desired power supply for the end load (i.e., battery or super capacitor). The suitable orientation for optimum conversion efficiency is proposed through ANSYS-based aerodynamics analysis. The voltage-induced by the DC generator is 35 V under the no-load condition while it is 25 V at a rated current of 6.9 A at full-load, yielding a supply of 100 W (on constant voltage) at a speed of 90 mph for nominal battery charging.

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“…Among different propulsion systems for such sUAVs, a hybrid propulsion system consisting of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) and a battery has been proposed for long duration missions, e.g., in [6][7][8][9]. Other propulsion systems may incorporate energy harvesters, such as in [10]. In this paper we focus on novel approaches to the energy management of sUAVs through optimal coordination between the PEMFC and battery for the previously proposed fuel cell hybrid propulsion system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stochastic Drift Counteraction Optimal Control of a Fuel Cell-Powered Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

2021

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This paper investigates optimal power management of a fuel cell hybrid small unmanned aerial vehicle (sUAV) from the perspective of endurance (time of flight) maximization in a stochastic environment. Stochastic drift counteraction optimal control is exploited to obtain an optimal policy for power management that coordinates the operation of the fuel cell and battery to maximize the expected flight time while accounting for the limits on the rate of change of fuel cell power output and the orientation dependence of fuel cell efficiency. The proposed power management strategy accounts for known statistics in transitions of propeller power and climb angle during the mission, but does not require the exact preview of their time histories. The optimal control policy is generated offline using value iterations implemented in Cython, demonstrating an order of magnitude speedup as compared to MATLAB. It is also shown that the value iterations can be further sped up using a discount factor, but at the cost of decreased performance. Simulation results for a 1.5 kg sUAV are reported that illustrate the optimal coordination between the fuel cell and the battery during aircraft maneuvers, including a turnpike in the battery state of charge (SOC) trajectory. As the fuel cell is not able to support fast changes in power output, the optimal policy is shown to charge the battery to the turnpike value if starting from a low initial SOC value. If starting from a high SOC value, the battery energy is used till a turnpike value of the SOC is reached with further discharge delayed to later in the flight. For the specific scenarios and simulated sUAV parameters considered, the results indicate the capability of up to 2.7 h of flight time.

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A Novel Energy Harvester for Powering Small UAVs: Performance Analysis, Model Validation and Flight Results

Cited by 54 publications

References 42 publications

Energy Harvester Sensing

Energy Harvester Sensing

Designing a Wind Energy Harvester for Connected Vehicles in Green Cities

Stochastic Drift Counteraction Optimal Control of a Fuel Cell-Powered Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

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