Droneport: From Concept To Prototype

The paper deals with the development of an experimental mechatronic system for battery management of drones called Droneport. It was developed as an automatic system with battery swapping and recharging feature set outside the drone, allowing a quick return to a mission. The first part presents its mechanical design, installed instrumentation and software environment. The next section is dedicated to the description of the individual hardware components, highlighting particular problems that had to be solved to optimize the size, weight and fulfill robustness demands. The last section summarizes our observations regarding the contribution of this tool to the drone or UAV autonomy in general.