Experimental Study on Rotor Dynamic Lift Determination for Agricultural Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (AUAV)

Actual dynamic lift is an important index to measure the load capacity of agricultural unmanned aerial vehicle (AUAV). In real operation, it is difficult to obtain the accurate value of dynamic lift, which is easily affected by environmental factors, such as wind and other disturbances. In this paper, a test platform, including hardware and software, has been developed. The main controller of the data acquisition system was PIC18F25K80, which could be used for PWM signal output and data communication. The experiment results showed that: the maximum mean absolute error of measurement system was less than 0.030kg. In addition, the pulse width of PWM signal was 1.0ms when the rotator speed was 0 rad/s, and then the rotator reached to the highest speed about 42.95 rad/s when pulse width equaled to 2.0 ms. Moreover, lift coefficient (k) of individual rotor to be tested was 0.003, and the maximum load weight of individual rotor was about 5.377 kg. The goodness of fit (R2) of curve which was obtained by the method of linear-regression analysis was about 0.923. This experimental study validated the effectiveness of dynamic lift model of AUAV rotor and laid the foundation for real-time dynamic lift measurement of AUAV.