Even nowadays, still some small huts in the alps need a helicopter to provide them with the necessities for living. This task is always connected with high costs and organisational effort. With the ongoing development in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) already a drone exist which can take over this task. Currently, this drone is limited to a payload of 100 kg. In this paper, the design and optimisation of a 19.5kW 2-level inverter based on half-bridge configuration modules using Silicon Carbide (SiC) technology for this type of cargo drones is presented. The 1200 V, 16mOmega SiC half-bridge modules of Wolfspeed provide the base for the power stage. With a switching frequency of 25 kHz and a power density of 8.29 kW/dm3 and 20.06 kW/kg the system achieves several advantages for this use-case, including a maximum payload of 200 kg. In addition, the layout of the Printed Circuit Boards (PCB’s) is optimised for altitudes over 3500m. In terms of control strategy, a Field Oriented Control (FOC) implementation on an ST microcontroller is performed. The system is optimised to work with a 19.5kW Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) of MAD Components. For validation of the functionality, several tests are performed including double-pulse tests, tests on a passive RL load as well as tests with a Motor test bench including the selected PMSM and a torque sensor. The measured system efficiency of the inverter and PMSM combination reaches 91.37%. The inverter itself reaches a peak efficiency of 98.42%. Further tests on the real drone are intended to be performed, and further optimisation will be done to allow a serial production of this design.

Multicopters are small, typically unmanned helicopters having more than two rotors. The wide range of possible applications of multicopters, spanning from environmental research to recreation, has raised the need to come up with innovative solutions to reduce the power demand of these platforms, with the goal of guaranteeing safe completion of missions. To this end, it is of paramount importance to understand the way in which the energy is invested and spent. The goal of this work is to provide reliable means to monitor multicopters energy consumption. We developed a monitoring platform to keep track of the energy consumption of multicopters. The platform relies on a set of sensors to collect the energy consumption data at different points of interest; data are then visualized in a monitoring dashboard. The monitoring system allows further analysis of the recorded data, which could be used to optimize multicopters energy consumption.