Researchers build a solar-powered hovering drone that weighs only 9 mg
Researchers created CoulombFly, a solar-powered drone with a lightweight electrostatic motor and gallium arsenide solar cells. Despite limitations, it hovers efficiently, showing potential for torque and lift enhancements.
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Researchers have developed a unique drone named CoulombFly, powered by onboard solar cells, optimized for weight and efficiency. The drone features a lightweight electrostatic motor, solar cells made of gallium arsenide, and a high-voltage power converter. Despite limitations like no onboard control hardware and inability for directed flight, the drone successfully hovers using solar power. The system demonstrated a lift-to-power efficiency of 7.6 grams per watt, with the motor alone achieving over 30 grams per watt efficiency. The researchers suggest potential optimizations to enhance torque, lift, and efficiency. The miniaturized version of the drone weighs only 9 milligrams but generates a milliwatt of power, showcasing its potential for further development. Although currently flown in controlled environments due to lack of control circuitry, there is room for additional hardware integration in the future.
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15 commentsThis one... I'm seeing flying solar powered landmines (skymines?) that can flutter around an active combat zone aimlessly for hours until it detects a personnel target and bops them near the temple with a small round. I wonder if there are any actual benefits over just putting a solar panel on a regular quadcopter and having them charge a battery, maybe staying stationary in field or ditch near the road, relocating once in a while and waiting for a target.
Slaughterbots, assemble! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA
No point in having an ICBM unless you know where to point it and how to guide it there. No point in having a loitering kill-drone swarm if you can't keep it from getting hacked.
How do you every do 15k rpm on 1 milliwatt? This sounds very odd to me, because unless You're in vacuum this is going to be a lot of air resistance..
Yeah, just make stuff up...
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