Endless Flyer: A Continuous Flying Drone with Automatic Battery Replacement

Surveillance and monitoring are indispensable in some large areas for purposes such as home security, road patrols, livestock monitoring, wildfire mapping, and ubiquitous sensing. Computer-controlled micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to perform such missions because they can move autonomously in a surveillance area without being constrained by ground obstacles. However, the duration of flights is a serious problem with UAVs. A typical UAV can fly only for about 10 min using currently available Li-Po batteries, which makes it difficult to conduct tasks like aerial surveillance that clearly require longer flying periods. In this study, we developed an automatic battery replacement mechanism that allows UAVs to fly continuously without manual battery replacement along with the suggestion of the scalable and robust usage for the system. We conducted an initial experiment using this system and successfully assessed the possibility of continuous surveillance in both indoor and outdoor environments.