Conceptual Design and Analysis of Small Power Station for Supporting Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Deployment

“Flight time” of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone flying robot is the key component for supporting industrial activities. In practice, most battery-powered drones can fly 20 30 minutes for a single charging cycle. When the battery depleted, the drone is forced to come back to the station to recharge, or swap in a charged battery. However, these tasks are manually done by human multiple times. Aside from the inconvenience, human error and inappropriate force application may damage the socket compartment or loosen the locking system between battery and socket, making higher risk of the battery accidentally fall off from the socket during the flight. This research presents a “Small power station” to automatically load and unload battery from the drone’s mainframe with a constant force. The station has two main functions: drone positioning, and six-slot-battery exchange mechanism. Product design and development (PDD) and Kano analysis method were applied to properly list necessary compartments of the designed station. Finite element analysis (FEA) and kinematic calculation were applied to virtually check whether or not the developed platform was designed in the safety boundary. “DJI Matrice 100” drone was applied as the case study to demonstrate the proposed approach.