A procedure for power consumption estimation of multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to find many commercial applications, which may require relatively long mission times. Therefore, it is important to make UAVs that can complete the mission in an efficient and power saving way. To achieve a prescribed flight mission, a UAV has to perform a number of maneuvers/movements, which will consume a certain amount of power. To maximize the cruising time, not only the power source is able to provide enough amount of power to the UAV but also the parts of the UAV can perform efficiently to save power. Before the minimum power capacity can be determined, it is required that the power consumptions of the UAV parts for the required mission be evaluated in a proper way. In this paper, a procedure is presented to estimate the power consumption of a composite UAV. The configuration as well as the fabrication of the UAV using truss-type parts made of carbon strand/epoxy composite material will be briefly introduced. The power consumptions of the propeller system and electric parts will be evaluated in a systematic way. Experiments were conducted to verify the theoretical predictions. Flight tests were also performed to study the power consumption of the UAV and the suitability of the proposed procedure for power consumption calculation.