이중 무인항공기 고공 비행전개 및 자율귀환 실험

Abstract

One of the major disadvantages of the unmanned aircraft such as a drone is that it has finite capacity of the battery and it is almost impossible to change the battery during the flight. In order to overcome the drawback, this research proposes a novel airdrop operation with dual unmanned aircraft. The suggested dual unmanned aircraft is composed of a carrier octo-copter and a mission quad-copter. The carrier octo-copter with large payload carries the mission quad-copter and flies with its energy source. After fully consuming the energy, the carrier octo-copter drops the mission quad-copter in the air. Then, the mission quad-copter starts to operate its designated mission with its own energy source. To enable the airdrop operation, a foldable structure of the mission quad-copter was developed. Intensive experiments to verify this airdrop flight mechanism were carried out with autonomous flight-back to the destination. The position and altitude data during experiments were acquired using the GPS and barometer in the quad-copter flight control unit. Synthesizing the information from the experiments, it is confirmed that the suggested idea can be a promising alternative to enlarge the flight distance and duration of the unmanned aircraft.