Heavy Payload Tethered Hexaroters for Agricultural Applications: Power Supply Design

---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract This research paper addresses the design problem of heavy payload tethered hexarotor for agricultural applications where payload requirements are high, low altitude long time hovering is expected. Tethered hexarotors are unmanned aerial vehicles with ability of vertical takeoffs, landings and hovering at desired location. Since the vehicle is tethered it has no flight time restrictions that the battery operated unmanned aerial vehicles has, and suitable for long time uninterrupted data acquisition tasks, while meeting requirements such as ability to provide power for data acquisition device and other related equipment operation. In this paper we mainly introduce in detail the power supply design of aerial vehicle and ground power supply station. Since the objective discipline is agricultural automation and remote sensing, the proposed design should be all terrain and has ability to operate under certain degree of rough weather as possible. In existing tethered hexarotors the payload thresholds are typically lower due to the vehicle body design, the weight of power conversion devices and relevant issues. Another fact is many popular hexarotors are not carefully designed to meet with reliability for industry use. Payload and available power capacity to data acquisition device are key factors in planning flight missions. Since one of our previous prototype has proven success to lift 30kg payload, in this research we evolve the vehicle design to be more practical and to become a good platform for future applications.