Mission planning strategy for multirotor UAV based on flight endurance estimation*

In this paper, the impact of fault effects occurring in actuators on energy consumption for multirotor UAV during mission development is analyzed. The multirotors are typically powered by Lithium Polymer batteries where the total mission time depends on the energy available on board. According to battery and actuators health, the discharge rate tends to increase which decrease the flight endurance causing that battery to discharge completely without guaranteeing the fulfillment of the mission or even a safety landing. In that sense, a model able to determines the maximum energy and flight endurance is used considering the battery discharge, State of Charge (SoC) and State of Health (SoH) and its impact during the mission execution is evaluated considering the fault effects in actuators modeled as loss of effectiveness. The proposed approach is tested at simulation level considering an hexarotor UAV.