Energy-Efficiency Path Planning for Quadrotor UAV Under Wind Conditions

Abstract: Quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles have a limited quantity of embedded energy. To preserve and guaranty the success of the UAV mission, we should manage energy consumption during the mission. In this study we introduce an optimization algorithm to minimize the consumed energy in quadrotor mission under windy conditions. The mechanical energy consumed by rotors of the flying vehicle is formulated with an efficiency function. Then, we formulate the energy minimization problem as an optimal control problem. The last problem is solved in order to calculate minimum energy for quadrotor simple mission under windy conditions. In simulation experiment, we compare the proposed method with an adaptive control approach.