How do drones play in winter?

How to better use the battery of UAV 1) to keep warm in extremely cold environment?

2) Personnel insulation

3) On-site operation instructions

1) battery insulation

According to reports, using drones in extremely cold conditions, heat preservation is the most important job. Without heat preservation measures, the life of the drone will plummet. Batteries that can normally fly for 15 minutes may not last for 1 minute in severe cold. Therefore, battery insulation is the most important thing, and most of the work is carried out around insulation. In order to use the UAV in extremely cold environment, the team of Zhang Yi, Li Bo and Liu Zhonghua specially designed a battery incubator, the main purpose of which is to keep the UAV battery at a constant temperature and save the warm-up time for ready use. The box is equipped with a heating battery to keep a constant temperature of 35 degrees. In addition, it is equipped with an air circulation system to keep the temperature of each battery uniform. This kind of incubator is very suitable for the environment that cars can't reach, and it is also very convenient to carry. At present, it can be said that it is the original battery insulation equipment in China.

(Original UAV battery insulation equipment shape)

A small box can hold so many batteries and cables.

(The bottom is equipped with a heating plate, which can be connected to the battery through an internal cable for insulation, and can also discharge the battery of the drone. )

However, it should be noted that even with such perfect insulation measures, the drone can't fly into the sky with an incubator, and the endurance of the drone in extremely cold winter conditions is still lower than that in normal environment. Don't take it lightly.

2) flying hand heat preservation

? If the battery is not insulated, its life will be short. Will flying hands be short if they don't keep warm? . Although this sentence is a joke, it also reflects the severe challenge that the flying hand faces in the extremely cold environment. If the flying hand doesn't do a good job of heat preservation, let alone can't operate the drone safely, it will be difficult to ensure its own health. In the flying hand work area on the hillside of Xueyuan, Zhang Yi and others showed the global drone reporter a model dubbed? Big pants? Our hand insulation equipment, this specially customized equipment is made of waterproof material, which has a lithium battery heater and can be used as a bag at ordinary times. Because the operation of the drone is very fine, it is impossible to manipulate the rocker flexibly with gloves on, and it is easy to get frostbite in the cold wind when gloves are taken off. So this equipment can be called a great weapon for outdoor work of drones in winter? Magic weapon? When in use, the hand, the remote controller and the mobile phone can be put into the bag and observed through the plastic cloth, which can not only keep the temperature of the remote controller and the mobile phone, but also prevent the hand from frostbite.

(? Big pants? Manual and remote control insulation equipment)

3) Method of use

UAV's battery life will be reduced in different degrees when flying in winter, and it can't be limited to the battery life on paper. According to reports, when flying hands operate drones in winter, once they take off, it is best not to stop halfway, but to use up power as much as possible in one flight, otherwise it will seriously affect the endurance and flight safety of the aircraft and it is likely to crash halfway. Caused a bad influence. The reason is determined by the characteristics of the battery. When the drone takes off, its battery voltage is the highest and it is fully charged. If you land halfway, the temperature will suddenly drop, which will seriously affect the performance of the battery, thus reducing the battery life and making the flight unpredictable.

According to another introduction, if the temperature is not very cold, such as about 5 degrees above zero, you can also hover for about 1 minute after the drone takes off, so that the battery can preheat itself before flying.

Not long ago, a self-developed four-axis UAV, which is still in the testing stage, experienced several inexplicable out-of-control flight tests in a low temperature environment. By studying the flight data of UAV, it is found that it is not the UAV itself, but the potentiometer of the remote controller. The so-called potentiometer refers to the device for detecting displacement in the rocker of the remote controller. It will expand with the change of temperature and contract when it is cold, which may lead to poor contact, thus leading to the loss of control of the aircraft.

Many flying hands have encountered similar problems in cold environment before. Most of them think that there is a problem with the drone or the pan/tilt, and rarely think that it is the fault of the remote control. Therefore, to operate the drone in extremely cold conditions, it is necessary not only to keep the battery and other equipment warm, but also to keep the temperature of the remote control.

? As a high-tech product, UAV has different usage methods and precautions in different environments.