Autonomous Soaring for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

摘要

One relatively unexplored way to improve the performance of an autonomous aircraft is to use buoyant plumes of air found in the lower atmosphere called thermals or updrafts. Updrafts are commonly used by glider pilots and birds to improve range, endurance, and cross-country speed. A small electric-powered UAV can extend its maximum duration 7 times longer using updrafts (ref. 1). Average endurance was found to be 4 times longer in simulation. The objective of this effort is to flight test autonomous soaring algorithms on a small UAV.