Intelligent soaring and path planning for solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles

Purpose This study aims to study the thermal identification issue by harvesting both solar energy and atmospheric thermal updraft for a solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV) and its electric energy performance under continuous soaring conditions. Design/methodology/approach The authors develop a specific dynamic model for SUAVs in both soaring and cruise modes. The support vector machine regression (SVMR) is adopted to estimate the thermal position, and it is combined with feedback control to implement the SUAV soaring in the updraft. Then, the optimal path model is built based on the graph theory considering the existence of several thermals distributed in the environment. The procedure is proposed to estimate the electricity cost of SUAV during flight as well as soaring, and making use of dynamic programming to maximize electric energy. Findings The simulation results present the integrated control method could allow SUAV to soar with the updraft. In addition, the proposed approach allows the SUAV to fly to the destination using distributed thermals while reducing the electric energy use. Originality/value Two simplified dynamic models are constructed for simulation considering there are different flight mode. Besides, the data-driven-based SVMR method is proposed to support SUAV soaring. Furthermore, instead of using length, the energy cost coefficient in optimization problem is set as electric power, which is more suitable for SUAV because its advantage is to transfer the three-dimensional path planning problem into the two-dimensional.