A comprehensive review of energy sources for unmanned aerial vehicles, their shortfalls and opportunities for improvements

Ashleigh Townsend; Immanuel N Jiya; Christiaan Martinson; Dmitri Bessarabov; Rupert Gouws

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05285

A comprehensive review of energy sources for unmanned aerial vehicles, their shortfalls and opportunities for improvements

Heliyon. 2020 Nov 16;6(11):e05285. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05285. eCollection 2020 Nov.

Authors

Ashleigh Townsend¹, Immanuel N Jiya², Christiaan Martinson³, Dmitri Bessarabov³, Rupert Gouws¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, North West University, Potchefstroom 2520, South Africa.
² Department of Engineering and Science, University of Agder, 4879 Grimstad, Norway.
³ HySA Infrastructure Center of Competence, Faculty of Engineering, North West University, Potchefstroom 2520, South Africa.

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were first introduced almost 40 years ago and their applications have increased and diversified substantially since then, in both commercial and private use. One of the UAVs main issues when it comes to mobility is that the power sources available are inadequate, this highlights an area for improvement as the interest in drones is on the increase. There exist many different types of power supplies applied to UAVs, however each has their own limitations and strengths that pertain to weight contributions, charging and discharging times, size, payload capabilities, energy density and power density. The aim of this paper is to review the main power sources available for UAVs, determine their shortfalls, compare the power sources with each other and offer suggestions as to how they can be improved - hence identifying where the gap lies for developing better alternative power sources.

Keywords: Aerospace engineering; Electric power transmission; Electrical engineering; Energy; Energy storage technology; Fuel cell; Fuel technology(FC); Hydrogen energy; Lithium-polymer (Li-Po); Super-capacitor (SC); Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Publication types

Review