Planar Acceleration Sensor for UAV in Cruise State Based on Single-Electrode Triboelectric Nanogenerator

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) accelerometer is a sensor that measures the acceleration of the UAV by detecting the components of gravity along the three axes. The use of self-powered technology in UAV accelerometers will become inevitable. This article proposes an asymmetric electrode arc triboelectric nanogenerator (ASA-TENG) based on the single-electrode mode. It is a potential self-powered acceleration sensor that is installed on the UAV to detect the acceleration in the cruise state. It is characterized by a simple structure, low quality, high sensitivity, large detection range, low cost, and environmental friendliness. Two ASA-TENG structures are stacked into a cross along the ${x}$ -axis and ${y}$ -axis to detect the components of actual acceleration along the two axes to detect the acceleration of random directions. Finally, the actual acceleration is obtained through the principle of acceleration synthesis, which can accurately detect the direction of acceleration. The ASA-TENG acceleration sensor can detect accelerations in the range of 0.1–40 m/s2. It exhibits a high sensitivity, and its response time has a good fitting relationship with acceleration ( ${R}$ 2 = 0.997). In addition, the voltage signal amplitude generated by the ASA-TENG sensor shows negligible fluctuations after 6 h of continuous operation. Comparison experiments with commercial acceleration sensor show a maximum relative error of only 2.9%. Therefore, the ASA-TENG acceleration sensors can be potentially used under cruise conditions of UAV as it presents numerous advantages.