Drones
Drones come with the potential to redefine the future of data acquisition and logistics. To fulfill any task effectively, a drone needs a smart battery with the ability to communicate all essential information to its flight computer.
Drone Applications include
Photography, filmography, measurements, inspections and agriculture. Many of those applications sometimes require special equipment like cameras or sensors to be attached to the drone.
State of Charge (SOC)
Precise knowledge on the drones status is essential for safe operations. You would never fly a drone without GPS, so you should never fly a drone without precise state of charge and state of health of your mission critical power source.
Flight time
One of the most important metrics is flight time for a given task. This will often be your optimization goal.
Batteries are usually the single heaviest components of a drone so choosing the right battery with the best energy/weight ratio at required power levels is essential.
Knowledge of your usual power profile enables aeroPAX to determine not only the SOC but also your remaining flight time. Enabling you to get the most out of a single flight without having to worry about range.
State of Health (SOH)
Every battery has a finite lifespan. The main determining factors are temperature, discharge / charge rates and cycle counts.
Deterioration occurs on two fronts; decrease in capacity reducing your flight time and decrease in peak performance. Decreasing peak performance is due to the increase in internal resistance of the cells and thereby reducing power capability. This will reduce the drones ability to provide necessary thrust.
Knowledge of your battery health will enable you to better understand when you need to replace your battery as to never endanger a critical mission.
Communication
Knowledge of all this information is wonderful but only helpful if one can act upon it. This is why it is essential to communicate the information to other parts on the drone such as the flight computer.
Our aeroPAX series uses UAVCAN to communicate all information to the drone.