Motion-Specific Battery Health Assessment for Quadrotors Using High-Fidelity Battery Models

Abstract

Quadrotor endurance is ultimately limited by battery behavior, yet most energy aware planning treats the battery as a simple energy reservoir and overlooks how flight motions induce dynamic current loads that accelerate battery degradation. This work presents an end to end framework for motion aware battery health assessment in quadrotors. We first design a wide range current sensing module to capture motion specific current profiles during real flights, preserving transient features. In parallel, a high fidelity battery model is calibrated using reference performance tests and a metaheuristic based on a degradation coupled electrochemical model.By simulating measured flight loads in the calibrated model, we systematically resolve how different flight motions translate into degradation modes loss of lithium inventory and loss of active material as well as internal side reactions. The results demonstrate that even when two flight profiles consume the same average energy, their transient load structures can drive different degradation pathways, emphasizing the need for motion-aware battery management that balances efficiency with battery degradation.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: Pipeline of motion-specific battery health assessment: reference tests calibrate an electrochemical model, flight data are acquired with a custom module, and virtual experiments evaluate degradation.
• Figure 2: Experimental setup of the battery-in-the-loop system, consisting of a programmable power supply, an electronic load, and a battery pack under test.
• Figure 3: Calibration results of the battery electrochemical model. (Top) Comparison between measured and simulated voltage responses under 0.1 C, 2 C, and pulse reference performance tests. (Bottom) Corresponding error profile, with segments distinguished by load conditions.
• Figure 4: Custom current sensing module integrated into the quadrotor platform. The module consists of a wide-range current sensor, an STM32 Nucleo board for control and data processing, and an SD card module for onboard data logging.
• Figure 5: Procedure of extraction and processing of motion-specific current profiles from quadrotor flight data. (a) Raw current signal with a moving-average filter. (b) Segmentation of the filtered data. (c) Periodic reconstruction of the segmented profiles. (d) Simulated voltage responses under the reconstructed profiles.