Innovative UAV Perching Approach for Persistent ISR with Rapid Charging

Small Unmanned Air Vehicles (SUAVs) can provide flexible, low-cost platforms for performing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, but the endurance of these platforms, particularly in hover, is a significant limitation for persistent ISR missions.Ā The capability to perch in a location from which an ISR mission can be performed can significantly extend achievable ISR mission durations.Ā When perching is coupled with the capability to harvest energy from the environment, mission durations become essentially unlimited.Ā Numerous perching approaches have been developed, and a variety of successful demonstrations of these capabilities have been conducted, but largely in controlled environments.Ā The proposed research focuses on developing and demonstrating a SUAV that is capable of autonomously performing long-duration persistent ISR missions in real-world environments by perching and harvesting energy.Ā Specifically, the proposed research would develop a novel, compact, lightweight perching system capable of high-rate energy harvesting from power lines.Ā The system includes an application-specific mechatronic gripper based on prior work by the team and will support recharging of flight batteries at rates limited only by the properties of the batteries themselves.Ā The proposed system will also include the perception and control capabilities needed to autonomously execute missions.Ā Key perception capabilities of the proposed system include three-dimensional mapping of the environment near the specified target of an ISR mission, identification of sites suitable for perching and energy harvesting, ranking of perching sites based on their suitability for the ISR mission, and precise localization of the perching location to support execution of the perching maneuver.Ā Key control components include inner-loop and outer-loop control approaches that provide the precision and disturbance rejection performance to execute perching maneuvers in the presence of winds and turbulence, and optimal path planning with obstacle avoidance to safely reach the perching site.Ā The proposed inner- and outer-loop control methods build on a dynamic inversion architecture that has been successfully demonstrated by the team in prior research with rotorcraft.Ā Path planning capabilities will be built on a proven multi-objective path planning architecture implemented by the team.Ā Phase I work willĀ include design of a complete vehicle system integrating the perching, perception, and control capabilities, along with representative payload sensors.Ā Modeling, analysis, and simulation work during Phase I will validate the suitability of the design for the intended mission.Ā Experimental testing of key components will provide critical data for analysis, and compelling evidence of the validity of the design.