5 accepted papers
This paper presents the design, modeling, control, and experimental test of a solar-powered quadcopter to allow for long-endurance missions. We first present the design of a large-scale quadcopter that incorporates solar energy harvesting capabilities. Based on the design results, we built the dynam…
This paper examines techniques for real-time terrain classification and solar irradiance mapping for outdoor, solar-powered mobile robots using a vision-based Artificial Neural Network (ANN). This process is completed sequentially. First, terrain classification is completed by extracting key feature…
This paper presents a mission planning problem for a cooperative team of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), which includes multiple rovers and a solar-powered mobile charging station. The team is required to start at an initial point and visit a series of objective points before arriving at the final…
This paper examines a mission planning problem for a solar-powered unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) which requires the vehicle to visit a series of objective points in minimal time subject to a strict net-energy change constraint. Though related to the Traveling Salesperson Problem, the mission plannin…
This paper examines an integrated path planning and power management problem for a solar-powered unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). The proposed method seeks to minimize the travel time of the UGV through an area with a known energy density by designing an optimal path and allocating the vehicle's power…