Tethered aerial robots using contactless power systems for extended mission time and range

Author

Choi, Su Y. ; Choi, Bo H. ; Jeong, Seog Y. ; Gu, Beom W. ; Yoo, Seung J. ; Rim, Chun T.

Author_Institution

KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea

fYear

2014

fDate

14-18 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

912

Lastpage

916

Abstract

Tethered aerial robots (TAR) that can be continuously powered by power cables for extended mission time and range are newly proposed. The TAR can overcome the limited mission time of conventional battery-based aerial vehicles and the mission range is quite extended with a virtue of a long aerial multi-wounded power cable. The TAR is equipped with an aerial contactless power system (ACPS) for avoiding the use of brush and an aerial tension control system (ATCS), first proposed in this paper, for avoiding tangled power cable. A prototype TAR including the ACPS and ATCS was developed and successfully demonstrated at outdoor environment, where the output power of 180 W at 100 kHz and a flight altitude of 20 m for 30 minutes were achieved.

Keywords

aircraft power systems; autonomous aerial vehicles; inductive power transmission; power cables; space power generation; ACPS; ATCS; TAR; aerial contactless power system; aerial multiwounded power cable; aerial tension control system; altitude 20 m; battery-based aerial vehicles; frequency 100 kHz; power 180 W; tethered aerial robots; time 30 min; Batteries; DC motors; Inverters; Power cables; Power supplies; Robots; Torque;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), 2014 IEEE

Conference_Location

Pittsburgh, PA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ECCE.2014.6953495

Filename

6953495