Power-minimizing control of a variable-pitch propulsion system for versatile unmanned aerial vehicles

In response to an abundance of applications, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are being called upon to perform missions of high difficulty for increasingly long periods of time. Traditional paradigms of propeller design and actuation are reaching a design ceiling, motivating creative approaches to the design of propeller-based propulsion mechanisms. Within the last decade, one particular kind of mechanism, the variable-pitch propeller, has been studied by researchers for its applications to the class of small UAVs. This paper pushes for new results in this area by exploring the use of Variable Pitch Propulsion (VPP) to minimize power consumption for small, versatile UAVs. A control algorithm is presented to minimize the consumed electrical power during a quasi-steady propulsive state. In particular, the algorithm is not confined to operation in limited regions of the state space, but it seeks to minimize power at whatever point in the state space a steady state is reached. Several experimental results are presented to validate the approach.