Modeling Power Consumptions for Multirotor UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have various advantages, but suffer from their limited energy in practical applications. Therefore, it is important to establish reasonable power consumption models for further efficient power. However, most existing works either establish theoretical power consumption models for fixed-wing UAVs and single-rotor UAVs or provide heuristic power consumption models for multirotor UAVs without rigorous mathematical derivations. This article aims to establish theoretical power consumption models for multirotor UAVs. To be specific, the closed-form power consumption models for a multirotor UAV in three flight statuses, i.e., forward flight, vertical ascent, and vertical descent, are derived by leveraging the relationship between single-rotor UAVs and multirotor UAVs in terms of power consumptions. On this basis, a generic flight power consumption model for the UAV in a 3-D scenario is obtained. Extensive experiments are conducted in real scenarios by using DJI M210 and a mobile app developed based on DJI Mobile SDK, and confirm the correctness and effectiveness of these models; in addition, power consumption model-based simulations are performed to further investigate the effect of the number of rotors and weight of payload on UAV power consumptions. The proposed power consumption models not only reveal how power consumptions of multirotor UAVs are affected by various factors, but also pave the way for introducing other applications.