The Development of Hybrid Power Management Unit for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper examines the creation of power management unit for the UAV hybrid power system, which allows increasing the UAV flight time and distancing significantly. This development is suitable for UAV hybrid systems with gasoline internal combustion engine. The main feature of this development is support and control of energy generation for the UAV. The proposed concept includes controls of the engine cooling, ignition, engine rate and throttle, generation current, engine start and cut-off. The system is suitable for copter, plane and VTOL UAVs. Due to the dense layout of particular vehicles, it is necessary to resolve the issues of electromagnetic compatibility, based on protection and decoupling of various elements among themselves. The controlling device for the internal combustion engine of vehicle carries out a complete decoupling of control and signal circuits, and protection of power for integrated circuits. The constructive decisions described in this paper include the installation of optically decoupled devices, protective diodes and resistances for bypassing the high voltage surges. It is explained how these features ensure the stability of the engine and its primary characteristics of engine rate support and generation current control. Processes of hybrid system prototype modelling, technical decisions and reliability issues have been described. The main outcome of this paper is a tested hybrid system prototype. This work can be used to develop the engine control units with high reliability and diverse set of functions.