Autonomous battery swapping system for small-scale helicopters

Abstract

A large focus of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) community has been shifted to addressing the requirements necessary for managing systems of UAVs. The ability to automate the process of tracking and responding to the health of UAVs contributes to the reliable and persistent operation of multiple UAV systems. In particular, the automation of managing UAVs and their resources removes a critical, frequent, and time consuming task from an operator's workload. We have developed a battery swapping mechanism capable of `refueling' UAVs autonomously. This paper presents an automated battery swapping system for multiple small-scale UAVs. The system includes a battery swapping mechanism and online algorithms to address resource management, vehicle health monitoring, and precision landing onto the battery swapping mechanism's landing platform.