Publications Unmanned Aircraft & Flight Testing
Continued Development and Flight Testing of a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft: UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer
AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum, January 2020, Orlando, FL, USA
Abstract
The growing application space of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is creating the need for aircraft capable of autonomous, long-distance, and long-endurance flights. The two main challenges are the limited power capacity of UAVs, as well as the adaptation to real-time detected stimuli, changing the course of the mission. This paper describes the continuous development of the UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer, which is equipped with low-power, high-performance computing capabilities. The Solar Flyer addresses the aforementioned challenges by balancing power consumption and solar power generation, and by performing on-board data processing, to enable real-time mission adaptation. The Solar Flyer was developed from commercial-of-the-shelf components, making it affordable for a wide variety of applications. Current efforts have built on previous work in terms of airframe, avionics, and flight software. Significant effort has been allocated to the re-design of the propulsion and energy systems as well as the re-organization of the aircraft system layout. The avionics and the open-source uavAP flight software were integrated into the aircraft, which was recently flight tested in a variety of conditions, confirming aircraft power consumption and production values.
Code and hardware artifacts
Cite this paper
@inproceedings{Continued_Solar_AIAAScitech20,
title = {{Continued Development and Flight Testing of a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft: UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer}},
author = {Dantsker, Or D. and Theile, Mirco and Caccamo, Marco and Yu, Simon and Vahora, Moiz and Mancuso, Renato},
booktitle = {AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum},
year = 2020,
month = jan,
address = {Orlando, FL, USA},
doi = {10.2514/6.2020-0781},
url = {https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2020-0781}
}
TY - CONF AU - Dantsker, Or D. AU - Theile, Mirco AU - Caccamo, Marco AU - Yu, Simon AU - Vahora, Moiz AU - Mancuso, Renato TI - Continued Development and Flight Testing of a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft: UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer T2 - AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum PY - 2020 DA - 2020/01// CY - Orlando, FL, USA DO - 10.2514/6.2020-0781 UR - https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2020-0781 AB - The growing application space of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is creating the need for aircraft capable of autonomous, long-distance, and long-endurance flights. The two main challenges are the limited power capacity of UAVs, as well as the adaptation to real-time detected stimuli, changing the course of the mission. This paper describes the continuous development of the UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer, which is equipped with low-power, high-performance computing capabilities. The Solar Flyer addresses the aforementioned challenges by balancing power consumption and solar power generation, and by performing on-board data processing, to enable real-time mission adaptation. The Solar Flyer was developed from commercial-of-the-shelf components, making it affordable for a wide variety of applications. Current efforts have built on previous work in terms of airframe, avionics, and flight software. Significant effort has been allocated to the re-design of the propulsion and energy systems as well as the re-organization of the aircraft system layout. The avionics and the open-source uavAP flight software were integrated into the aircraft, which was recently flight tested in a variety of conditions, confirming aircraft power consumption and production values. ER -
%0 Conference Paper %A Dantsker, Or D. %A Theile, Mirco %A Caccamo, Marco %A Yu, Simon %A Vahora, Moiz %A Mancuso, Renato %T Continued Development and Flight Testing of a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft: UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer %B AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum %D 2020 %C Orlando, FL, USA %R 10.2514/6.2020-0781 %U https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2020-0781 %X The growing application space of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is creating the need for aircraft capable of autonomous, long-distance, and long-endurance flights. The two main challenges are the limited power capacity of UAVs, as well as the adaptation to real-time detected stimuli, changing the course of the mission. This paper describes the continuous development of the UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer, which is equipped with low-power, high-performance computing capabilities. The Solar Flyer addresses the aforementioned challenges by balancing power consumption and solar power generation, and by performing on-board data processing, to enable real-time mission adaptation. The Solar Flyer was developed from commercial-of-the-shelf components, making it affordable for a wide variety of applications. Current efforts have built on previous work in terms of airframe, avionics, and flight software. Significant effort has been allocated to the re-design of the propulsion and energy systems as well as the re-organization of the aircraft system layout. The avionics and the open-source uavAP flight software were integrated into the aircraft, which was recently flight tested in a variety of conditions, confirming aircraft power consumption and production values.
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"DOI": "10.2514/6.2020-0781",
"abstract": "The growing application space of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is creating the need for aircraft capable of autonomous, long-distance, and long-endurance flights. The two main challenges are the limited power capacity of UAVs, as well as the adaptation to real-time detected stimuli, changing the course of the mission. This paper describes the continuous development of the UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer, which is equipped with low-power, high-performance computing capabilities. The Solar Flyer addresses the aforementioned challenges by balancing power consumption and solar power generation, and by performing on-board data processing, to enable real-time mission adaptation. The Solar Flyer was developed from commercial-of-the-shelf components, making it affordable for a wide variety of applications. Current efforts have built on previous work in terms of airframe, avionics, and flight software. Significant effort has been allocated to the re-design of the propulsion and energy systems as well as the re-organization of the aircraft system layout. The avionics and the open-source uavAP flight software were integrated into the aircraft, which was recently flight tested in a variety of conditions, confirming aircraft power consumption and production values."
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O. D. Dantsker, M. Theile, M. Caccamo, S. Yu, M. Vahora, and R. Mancuso, “Continued Development and Flight Testing of a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft: UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer,” in AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.2514/6.2020-0781.
Dantsker, O. D., Theile, M., Caccamo, M., Yu, S., Vahora, M., & Mancuso, R. (2020). Continued Development and Flight Testing of a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft: UIUC-TUM Solar Flyer. In AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2020-0781