A Small-Scale Prototype to Study the Take-Off of Tethered Rigid Aircrafts for Airborne Wind Energy
arXiv:1608.01846 · doi:10.1109/TMECH.2017.2698405
Abstract
The design of a prototype to carry out take-off and flight tests with tethered aircrafts is presented. The system features a ground station equipped with a winch and a linear motion system. The motion of these two components is regulated by an automatic control system, whose goal is to accelerate a tethered aircraft to take-off speed using the linear motion system, while reeling-out the tether from the winch with low pulling force and avoiding entanglement. The mechanical, electrical, measurement and control aspects of the prototype are described in detail. Experimental results with a manually-piloted aircraft are presented, showing a good matching with previous theoretical findings.
This is the pre-print of a paper submitted for publication. The authors are with ABB Switzerland Ltd., Corporate Research, 5405 Baden-Dättwil - Switzerland
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