A Mid-Air Autonomous Battery Exchange Aerial System
Yooseung Choi, Jamie Henson, Kai Xue Keller, Clifford Gamble, Abhishek Kini, Ran Dai
Abstract
This paper presents an autonomous mid-air battery exchange system that sustains AAV operations without ground returns by docking a supplier drone to a receiver drone and swapping batteries in flight. Our approach includes (1) a hierarchical rendezvous planner that selects a mutually reachable three-dimensional docking point and generates a collision-free, dynamically feasible trajectory for both drones, and (2) a docking guidance framework that combines real-time kinematic (RTK)-based relative positioning, offset-compensated tracking, and empirically tuned altitude control to maintain stability during docking. Once docking is achieved, a battery-switching mechanism on the supplier drone uses a geared stepper motor for a belt system to collect the depleted battery and pass the new battery to the receiver drone. Simulations and outdoor flight tests in moderate wind conditions demonstrated effective rendezvous, stable docking, and successful battery exchange, supporting mid-air swapping as a viable approach to extended endurance.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2026_amidairautonomou,
title = {A Mid-Air Autonomous Battery Exchange Aerial System},
author = {Yooseung Choi and Jamie Henson and Kai Xue Keller and Clifford Gamble and Abhishek Kini and Ran Dai},
booktitle = {RA-L 2026},
year = {2026}
}