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Extending the Lifetime of Nano-Blimps via Dynamic Motor Control

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Abstract

Nano-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), e.g. quadcopters, have received significant attention in recent years. Although their capabilities have grown, they continue to have very limited flight times, tens of minutes at most. The main constraints are the battery’s energy density and the engine power required for flight. In this work, we present a nano-sized blimp platform, consisting of a helium balloon and a rotorcraft. Thanks to the lift provided by helium, the blimp requires relatively little energy to remain at a stable altitude. This lift, however, decreases with time as the balloon inevitably deflates requiring additional control mechanisms to keep the desired altitude. We study how duty-cycling high power actuators can further reduce the average energy requirements for hovering. With the addition of a solar panel, it is even feasible to sustain tens or hundreds of flight hours in modest lighting conditions. Furthermore, we study how a balloon’s deflation rate affects the blimp’s energy budget and lifetime. A functioning 68-gram prototype was thoroughly characterized and its lifetime was measured under different harvesting conditions and different power management strategies. Both our system model and the experimental results indicate our proposed platform requires less than 200 mW to hover indefinitely with an ideal balloon. With a non-ideal balloon the maximum lifetime of ∼400 h is bounded by the rotor’s maximum thrust. This represents, to the best of our knowledge, the first nano-size UAV for long term hovering with low power requirements.

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Notes

  1. https://www.bitcraze.io/crazyflie-2/.

  2. http://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/nRF51-Series-SoC.

  3. http://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers/stm32f405-415.

  4. http://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/bq29200.

  5. Note that, a platform slightly lighter-than-air, coupled with a propeller generating lowering would be feasible as well. However, with this design the deflation of the balloon over time would require a second rotor generating lift.

  6. http://www.microflight.com/Online-Catalog/Motors

  7. https://panasonic.co.jp/es/pesam/en/products/

  8. Logarithm of a normal distribution.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Arnaldo Palossi, Lukas Sigrist and Antonio Pullini for their support.

Funding

This work has been funded by projects EC H2020 HERCULES (688860), Nano-Tera.ch YINS, and Transient Computing Systems (SNF grant 157048).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS), ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Daniele Palossi, Andres Gomez, Andrea Marongiu & Luca Benini

  2. Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory (TIK), ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Andres Gomez, Stefan Draskovic & Lothar Thiele

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI), University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Andrea Marongiu

  4. Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering (DEI), University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Luca Benini

Authors
  1. Daniele Palossi
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  2. Andres Gomez
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  5. Lothar Thiele
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Correspondence to Daniele Palossi.

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Palossi, D., Gomez, A., Draskovic, S. et al. Extending the Lifetime of Nano-Blimps via Dynamic Motor Control. J Sign Process Syst 91, 339–361 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-018-1343-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-018-1343-1

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