Optimizing Energy Usage for an Electric Drone

Abstract Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly gaining popularity in a wide variety of applications, e.g., agriculture, health care, environmental management, supply chains, law enforcement, surveillance, and photography. Dones are often powered by batteries, making energy a critical resource that must be optimised during the mission of the drone. The duration of a done’s mission depends on the amount of energy required to perform some manoeuvering actions (takeoff, level flight, hovering, and landing), the energy required to power the ICT modules in the drone, the drone’s speed, payload, and the wind. In this paper, we present a model that minimizes the energy consumption of a low power drone and maximizes the time required to completely drain the drone’s battery and ensure the safe landing of the drone.