Battery cycle life assessment for a lift+cruise electric vertical takeoff and landing transporter drone

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is a new future concept of air transportation to move people and cargo effectively and safely between places that are under or not served by different transportation modes. Transporter drone is one of the potential vehicles envisaged to fulfill this future AAM needs. One of the key challenges and crucial components in enabling successful transporter drone flight is the batteries used as they have limited usage cycle lifespan that affects the system airworthiness significantly. Hence to ensure continuous airworthiness of the platform, it is vital to know or predict the battery State of Health (SOH) and cycle life accurately. This paper describes a systematic approach on battery cycle life assessment through experimental battery usage cycle test for a lift+cruise transporter drone using realistic operating flight profile. Analysis on the battery cycle test data collected provides useful battery health and usage cycle lifespan information for system preventive and predictive maintenance in maintaining its airworthiness. Battery SOH estimation was done using linear predictive models with the collected battery cycle data while battery cycle life model was formulated using a double exponential parametric regression model. The battery cycle data collected is made publicly available for the community.