AWEsome: An open-source test platform for airborne wind energy systems
This provides an accessible tool for research groups and startups to test airborne wind energy technologies without large financial investments, though it is incremental in nature.
The authors developed AWEsome, an open-source, low-cost test platform for airborne wind energy systems, enabling autonomous tethered flight with new flight modes and reporting successful real-flight tests.
In this paper we present AWEsome (Airborne Wind Energy Standardized Open-source Model Environment), a test platform for airborne wind energy systems that consists of low-cost hardware and is entirely based on open-source software. It can hence be used without the need of large financial investments, in particular by research groups and startups to acquire first experiences in their flight operations, to test novel control strategies or technical designs, or for usage in public relations. Our system consists of a modified off-the-shelf model aircraft that is controlled by the pixhawk autopilot hardware and the ardupilot software for fixed wing aircraft. The aircraft is attached to the ground by a tether. We have implemented new flight modes for the autonomous tethered flight of the aircraft along periodic patterns. We present the principal functionality of our algorithms. We report on first successful tests of these modes in real flights.