CPS: Breakthrough: Solar-powered, Long-endurance UAV for Real-time Onboard Data Processing

CPS：突破：用于实时机载数据处理的太阳能长航时无人机

• 批准号: 1646383
• 负责人: Marco Caccamo
• 金额: $ 42.5万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1646383&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CPS; Breakthrough; Solar; powered; Long

In recent years, there has been a substantial uptrend in the popularity of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These aircraft find application in several areas such as precision farming, infrastructure and environment monitoring, surveillance, surveying and mapping, search and rescue missions, rapid assessment of emergency situations and natural disasters, next generation Internet connectivity, weather determination and more. Given the wide range of possibilities, UAVs represent a growing market in CPS and they are perceived as an "enabling technology" to re-consider the human involvement in many military and civil applications on a global scale. One of the major challenges in enabling this growth is UAV endurance. This is directly related to the amount of energy available to the UAV to perform its mission. This proposal looks to increase UAV endurance by trading off UAV performance with energy efficient computing. This requires mapping of mission and goals into energy needs and computational requirements. The goal of the project is to show that this trade can enable long-duration flight especially when solar energy is utilized as a primary energy source. The ambitious plan is to develop a light weight and efficient aircraft capable of maneuver-aware power adaptation and real-time video/sensor acquisition and processing for up to 12 hours of continuous flight (this limit being set by daylight hours).This project aims to expanding the theoretical and practical foundations for the design and integration of UAVs capable of real-time sensing and processing from an array of visual, acoustic and other sensors. The traditional approach for small size UAVs is to capture data on the aircraft, stream it to the ground through a high power data-link, process it remotely, perform analysis, and then relay commands back to the aircraft as needed. Conversely, this research targets a solar-powered UAV with a zero-carbon footprint that carries a high performance embedded computer system payload capable of budgeting at run-time the available power between the propulsion/actuation subsystems and the computing and communication subsystems. First, a set of accurate power models for the considered UAV will be constructed to establish a mapping between different flight modes (aircraft maneuvers) and the corresponding power requirements at the propulsion/actuation subsystem. Second, software and hardware-level power adaptation mechanisms will be developed to devise a novel Power Adaptive Integrated Modular Avionic (PA-IMA) architecture suitable for UAVs. Safe temporal/spatial partitioning among applications and flexible scheduling to handle unpredictable power/load variations in flight represent key requirements. Once an accurate characterization is available for flight and computation modes, a higher-level supervisory logic will be developed to distribute the available power budget between the propulsion/actuation subsystem and the computation/communication subsystem. While precision farming and land/infrastructure monitoring will immediately benefit from such a technology, the long-term impact of this research is much broader since it explores the very foundations of environment-aware power and computation management. In general, the developed theory will be applicable to autonomous vehicles and robots whose power budget is limited and variable: these are common challenges faced when harvesting solar and wind energy.

近年来，无人驾驶飞行器（UAV）的普及有着显著的上升趋势。这些飞机可应用于多个领域，如精准农业，基础设施和环境监测，监视，测绘，搜索和救援任务，紧急情况和自然灾害的快速评估，下一代互联网连接，天气测定等。鉴于广泛的可能性，无人机代表了CPS不断增长的市场，它们被视为一种“使能技术”，可以重新考虑人类在全球范围内参与许多军事和民用应用。 实现这一增长的主要挑战之一是无人机的续航能力。 这与UAV执行其使命可用的能量的量直接相关。 该提案旨在通过权衡UAV性能与节能计算来增加UAV续航力。 这需要将使命和目标映射到能源需求和计算要求中。 该项目的目标是表明这种贸易可以实现长时间飞行，特别是在利用太阳能作为主要能源时。这项雄心勃勃的计划是开发一种重量轻、效率高的飞机，能够实现可感知的功率自适应和实时视频/传感器采集和处理，最长可持续飞行12小时（这一限制是由白天的时间）。该项目旨在扩大无人机的设计和集成的理论和实践基础，能够实时感知和处理从一系列的视觉，声学和其他传感器。小型无人机的传统方法是捕获飞机上的数据，通过高功率数据链路将其传输到地面，远程处理，执行分析，然后根据需要将命令传回飞机。相反，这项研究的目标是一个太阳能无人机与零碳足迹，携带高性能的嵌入式计算机系统的有效载荷，能够在运行时预算之间的推进/驱动子系统和计算和通信子系统的可用功率。首先，将为所考虑的无人机建立一组精确的功率模型，以建立不同飞行模式（飞机机动）与推进/作动子系统相应功率要求之间的映射。其次，将开发软件和硬件级的功率自适应机制，以设计一种适合于无人机的新型功率自适应集成模块化航空电子（PA-IMA）架构。应用程序之间的安全时间/空间分区和灵活调度以处理飞行中不可预测的功率/负载变化是关键要求。一旦对飞行和计算模式有了准确的描述，将开发一个更高层次的管理逻辑，以便在推进/作动子系统和计算/通信子系统之间分配可用的功率预算。 虽然精准农业和土地/基础设施监测将立即受益于这种技术，但这项研究的长期影响要广泛得多，因为它探索了环境感知电力和计算管理的基础。总的来说，所开发的理论将适用于功率预算有限且可变的自动驾驶汽车和机器人：这些是收集太阳能和风能时面临的常见挑战。

项目成果

Electric Propulsion System Optimization for Long-Endurance and Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft

长航时太阳能无人机电力推进系统优化

• DOI: 10.2514/6.2019-4486
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2019 Forum
• 作者: Dantsker, Or D.;Imtiaz, Saym;Caccamo, Marco
• 通讯作者: Caccamo, Marco

Integrated Power Modeling for a Solar-Powered, Computationally-Intensive Unmanned Aircraft

太阳能供电、计算密集型无人机的集成功率建模

• DOI: 10.2514/6.2020-3568
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2020 Forum
• 作者: Dantsker, Or;Theile, Mirco;Caccamo, Marco
• 通讯作者: Caccamo, Marco

Propulsion System Design, Optimization, Simulation, and Testing for a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft

长航时太阳能无人机推进系统设计、优化、仿真和测试

• DOI: 10.2514/6.2020-3966
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2020 Forum
• 作者: Dantsker, Or;Caccamo, Marco;Imtiaz, Saym
• 通讯作者: Imtiaz, Saym

Propulsion System Testing for a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft

长航时太阳能无人机的推进系统测试

• DOI: 10.2514/6.2019-3688
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: AIAA Aviation 2019 Forum
• 作者: Dantsker, Or D.;Deters, Robert;Caccamo, Marco
• 通讯作者: Caccamo, Marco

A High-Fidelity, Low-Order Propulsion Power Model for Fixed-Wing Electric Unmanned Aircraft

固定翼电动无人机的高保真低阶推进功率模型

• DOI: 10.2514/6.2018-5009
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: AIAA/IEEE Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium
• 作者: Dantsker, Or D.;Theile, Mirco;Caccamo, Marco
• 通讯作者: Caccamo, Marco