Development of automation and control software for charging systems of multirotor small unmanned aircraft systems for tasks of cargo seaports

The paper considers the situation of using an unmanned aircraft system to perform autonomous flights between cargo port areas, for example, to collect data for building digital spatial models or to transfer a certain type of cargo. It is noted that due to the considerable size and remoteness of cargo terminals from each other it is necessary to place a network of automated charging stations. The efficiency of autonomous flights is substantiated and a new model of flight assignment of an unmanned aircraft system is given for solving the routing problem, taking into account the location of charging station sites, for example, in cargo port areas. To solve the set tasks, a new hardware system for charging unmanned aerial systems considering a receiver module with a coil on board and a ground landing system for charging is considered, circuit diagrams are given and constraints for performing the battery charging process are specified. The fragments of programme codes of automation of the graphical interface of the webserver with display of all parameters and calculation of the coefficient of efficiency at charging are resulted. The choice of Arduino IDE software environment is justified. The possibility of using the developed automated station for battery charging for a large class of drones of mulitirotor type is noted. On the basis of a series of experiments in the flight research field of the laboratory of unmanned aircraft systems of the SUAI, it is established that the charging station together with the receiving module managed to achieve the efficiency of charge transfer at the level of 73.7 %. The obtained values of efficiency allow to draw a conclusion about the possibility of practical use for real transport tasks and the possibility of network deployment, in particular, on the dedicated specialised areas of the cargo port. The developed automation subprogramme for the deployment of a network of charging stations (e. g. in different areas of the port) allows to create an information system for monitoring the operation of charging stations, which significantly increases the controllability and reliability of the system.

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