Trajectory determination for energy efficient autonomous soaring

Unmanned Aerial Gliders (UAG) use atmospheric energy in its different forms to remain aloft for extended flight durations. This UAG's aim is to extract atmospheric thermal energy and use it to supplement its battery energy usage and increase the mission period. Given an identified atmospheric thermal of known strength and location; current wind speed and direction; battery level; altitude and location of the UAG; and estimating the expected altitude gain from the thermal, is it possible to make an energy-efficient based motivation to fly to an atmospheric thermal so as to achieve UAG extended flight time? For this work it is assumed that candidate atmospheric thermal locations are of known longitude/latitude location, size, and strength. An algorithm, based on a fuzzy logic approach, is then developed to incorporate all available information with the current UAG status to provide an energy-based recommendation to modify the flight path from the nominal mission trajectory. Research, development, and simulation of the decision-making algorithm is the primary focus of this work. Three models are developed: Battery Usage Model (BUM), Altitude Gain Model (AGM), and Intelligent Decision Model (IDM).