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    Berkeley Solar Drone

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    Aviation/Space History Library
    The document describes a solar-powered drone project undertaken by students at UC Berkeley to demonstrate extended flight times using renewable energy. The drone is a fixed-wing aircraft with a 3-meter wingspan that uses solar cells and a maximum power point tracker to charge its batteries during flight. An autonomous control system maintains stable level flight and allows the drone to operate without human control for long periods. The students were able to show the feasibility of a solar-powered plane that can provide its own power and fly itself, and suggest that with more solar cells flight times could be extended to multiple days.

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    Berkeley Solar Drone

    Uploaded by

    Aviation/Space History Library
    296 views1 page
    The document describes a solar-powered drone project undertaken by students at UC Berkeley to demonstrate extended flight times using renewable energy. The drone is a fixed-wing aircraft with a 3-meter wingspan that uses solar cells and a maximum power point tracker to charge its batteries during flight. An autonomous control system maintains stable level flight and allows the drone to operate without human control for long periods. The students were able to show the feasibility of a solar-powered plane that can provide its own power and fly itself, and suggest that with more solar cells flight times could be extended to multiple days.

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    Drones

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    The document describes a solar-powered drone project undertaken by students at UC Berkeley to demonstrate extended flight times using renewable energy. The drone is a fixed-wing aircraft with a 3-meter wingspan that uses solar cells and a maximum power point tracker to charge its batteries during flight. An autonomous control system maintains stable level flight and allows the drone to operate without human control for long periods. The students were able to show the feasibility of a solar-powered plane that can provide its own power and fly itself, and suggest that with more solar cells flight times could be extended to multiple days.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    296 views1 page

    Berkeley Solar Drone

    Uploaded by

    Aviation/Space History Library
    The document describes a solar-powered drone project undertaken by students at UC Berkeley to demonstrate extended flight times using renewable energy. The drone is a fixed-wing aircraft with a 3-meter wingspan that uses solar cells and a maximum power point tracker to charge its batteries during flight. An autonomous control system maintains stable level flight and allows the drone to operate without human control for long periods. The students were able to show the feasibility of a solar-powered plane that can provide its own power and fly itself, and suggest that with more solar cells flight times could be extended to multiple days.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 1

    BERKELEY SOLAR DRONE University of California, Berkeley

    Quan Nguyen, Albert Ou, Zachary Hargreaves, Brian Kim Faculty Advisor: Dr. Michel Maharbiz
    Challenge Description
    The problem of long-endurance ight has yet to be adequately solved with
    unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Conventional powertrains are typically
    disadvantaged by limited capacities for non-renewable fuels, but in theory a
    renewable energy source would permit self-sustaining ight.
    Project Scope
    This team intends to demonstrate extended ight times using an autonomous
    solar-powered UAV:
    Ability to obtain additional energy from external sources during ight
    Insucient densities exhibited by current technologies for energy storage
    Autonomous control to maintain stable and level ight in a holding pattern
    Circumvent human fatigue
    Rapid response to changing conditions
    Potential for more precise ight path over the long term
    Fixed-wing aircraft with a 3-meter wide wingspan
    Maximize lift force at relatively low velocities
    Maximize area for solar cell arrays
    Potential Use Cases
    A variety of civil applications would benet from a long-endurance aerial platform
    that can be easily augmented with diverse payloads:
    Remote sensing and Earth observation: Forest re mapping, crop
    assessment, monitoring of industrial infrastructure
    Emergency response: communication relays, search and rescue
    Scientic research: meteorology, ecology, astronomy, archaeology
    Power Subsystem
    The Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) acquires input power from the solar
    cells and output a proper supply voltage for the rest of the electronics.
    DC-DC boost converter more ecient than buck-boost or cuk converters
    under low light conditions
    Near-linear relationship between duty cycle and output voltage for most of
    the V-D curve
    Airfoil
    Gentle Lady wing cross-section:
    Image source: http://manuals.hobbico.com/gpm/gpma1960-manual.pdf
    Systems Architecture
    Low-Level
    Autopilot
    ATmega328
    I
    2
    C
    High-Level
    Autopilot
    IFC9402-01 (Atom)
    NMEA 0183
    parser/buer
    ATtiny44a
    GPS
    LS20031
    IMU
    L3G4200D/LSM303DLM
    MPPT
    ATtiny44a
    UART AR600 RX
    PWM
    WDT
    ATtiny13a
    MUX
    74157CT
    PWM
    PWM
    Servos
    ESC
    Motor
    Control Surfaces
    UART
    XBee
    Airframe
    Gentle Lady sailplane outtted with a brushless motor
    Low-Level Autopilot
    R(t)
    yaw drift
    detection
    GPS
    e(t)

    dt Ki
    Kp
    roll-pitch drift
    detection
    accelerometer
    e,(t)

    dt Ki
    Kp
    gyroscope

    DCM update and renormalization
    Tait-Bryan angles control surface deections
    Direction Cosine Matrix (DCM): roll , pitch , yaw
    R(, , ) = Rx()Ry ()Rz ()
    =

    cos cos sin sin cos cos cos cos sin cos + sin sin
    cos sin sin sin sin + cos cos cos sin sin sin cos
    sin sin cos cos cos

    Integrating innitesimal rotations:


    R(t + dt) = R(t)

    1 d d
    d 1 d
    d d 1

    Tait-Bryan angles:
    = sin
    1
    (R31)
    = tan
    1
    (R21/R11)
    = tan
    1
    (R32/R33)
    Image source: Wikimedia Commons
    Avionics Hardware
    Attitude Control System production setup:
    Atmel ATmega328 microcontroller
    Pololu 66-Channel LS20031 GPS receiver
    Pololu MiniIMU-9 gyro, accelerometer,
    and magnetometer (L3G4200D and
    LSM303DLM Carrier)
    Digi XBee Series 1 with wire antenna
    Inforce SYS9402-01 development board
    Custom PWM signal multiplexer
    Custom maximum power point tracker
    Spektrum DX5e 2.4 GHz transmitter and
    AR600 receiver
    Skyartec BMC-35A electronic speed
    control (ESC)
    Turnigy 2200 mAh 3S Li-Po battery
    Performance
    Main loop executes at 100 Hz with 15% worst-case processor utilization
    Maximum power of 3.42 W at 0.581 V and 5.9 A per individual C60 cell
    Simple DC-DC boost converter is 52% ecient
    Conclusion
    Despite the resource constraints on this project, this team was able to establish
    the feasibility of creating a 3-meter wingspan plane capable of ying itself and
    providing for its own power supply. With additional resources, such as more solar
    cells, ight times could be extended to allow for multiple-day ight.
    Acknowledgements
    We would like to thank the faculty, sta, and students at the University of
    California, Berkeley for their guidance and support. There are many others not at
    the University who provided valuable information for our work; we would like to
    express our gratitude to them as well.
    Cornell Cup USA, 4 May 2012 5 May 2012
    Light Basin Laboratory [email protected] Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

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