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Experimental Testing of a Hybrid Power Plant for a Dirigible UAV

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Abstract

Dirigibles have the ability to take off and land vertically, hover and maintain lift without consuming energy, and can be easily deflated for packaging and transportation. As such, dirigibles are well suited for surveillance and surveyance missions such as rescue and aid operations after disasters. This paper reviews hybrid dirigible UAV design considerations, then presents a novel hybrid power plant design. The hybrid power plant design consists of a 2-stroke 4cc glow engine in-line with a brushless DC motor/ generator and variable pitch propeller. The experimental results have shown that the hybrid power plant is capable of producing a power output of 148.4 W.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

    Steven Recoskie, Atef Fahim & Eric Lanteigne

  2. Electrical Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

    Wail Gueaieb

Authors
  1. Steven Recoskie
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  2. Atef Fahim
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  3. Wail Gueaieb
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  4. Eric Lanteigne
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Correspondence to Steven Recoskie.

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Recoskie, S., Fahim, A., Gueaieb, W. et al. Experimental Testing of a Hybrid Power Plant for a Dirigible UAV. J Intell Robot Syst 69, 69–81 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-012-9764-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-012-9764-8

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