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Researcher Working to Develop On-board Energy Harvesting for Earth Observation UAVs

September 30, 2024

A University of Maryland Grand Challenges Grant is supporting research by Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Cecilia Huertas Cerdeira aimed at developing on-board energy harvesting for Earth observation unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The need for effective, low-cost Earth observation tools remains one of the barriers to improving the ability to predict and mitigate the effects of climate change. In recent years, UAVs have emerged as a promising platform for capturing environmental data. However, limited power available in the vehicles’ on-board batteries impacts their range and endurance, preventing UAVs from achieving their full potential to support Earth observation. 

The objective of Dr. Huertas Cerdeira’s project is to address this challenge by developing on-board energy harvesters that enable the UAVs to recharge their batteries on-site. The main innovation is the use of existing components on the UAV to harvest energy, minimizing added weight. In particular, the project will exploit aeroelastic phenomena on the UAV’s wings to harvest energy. This could help significantly improve current Earth observation capabilities. 

Ultimately, the acquisition of high-resolution, large-area data of the Earth system will improve predictions and modeling of its evolution, resulting in the development of better methods and regulations to alleviate climate change. Additionally, this work will help open the door to the development of UAVs that can perform continuous monitoring of remote areas to detect fires, oil spills and other catastrophic events, critical to minimizing the effects of these disasters.

So far, the team has proven the ability of a rigid inverted flag to harvest wind energy and has shown that it can do so with a higher efficiency than piezoelectric flag harvesters, which were state-of-the-art up until now. The team has also developed an experimental setup that will help optimize harvester parameters using a hardware-in-the loop approach. The next steps are the miniaturization of the system and implementation on board of a UAV. 

The team’s findings to date will be presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics in November.

For more information, visit: https://research.umd.edu/energy-uavs