ArduSoar: an Open-Source Thermalling Controller for Resource-Constrained Autopilots
This work addresses the challenge of autonomous soaring for small UAVs to increase operational endurance, representing a domain-specific incremental improvement.
The authors tackled the problem of extending flight time for fixed-wing UAVs by developing ArduSoar, an open-source thermalling controller integrated into the ArduPlane autopilot, and demonstrated its robustness in real flight tests under non-ideal conditions.
Autonomous soaring capability has the potential to significantly increase time aloft for fixed-wing UAVs. In this paper, we introduce ArduSoar, the first soaring controller integrated into a major autopilot software suite for small UAVs. We describe ArduSoar from the algorithmic standpoint, outline its integration with the ArduPlane autopilot, discuss parameter tuning for it, and conduct a series of flight tests on real sUAVs that show ArduSoar's robustness even in highly non-ideal atmospheric conditions.