Development and Evaluation of Inverted Docking Station for Small Quadrotor UAV

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have transformed numerous industries and services. However, the limited flight time of these vehicles remains a significant challenge that affects mission efficiency and duration. Research have been done to charge or swap the battery of these drones. This paper proposes a battery swapping station that employs an inverted landing approach instead of a ground landing to address this issue. The inverted landing concept is presented, and an experimental study is conducted using a DJI TELLO drone to demonstrate its feasibility. These experiments have been followed to calculate the operation time of each section of the system. Finally, 96.5 seconds of battery swapping time was measured.