Hello
I am an engineering student and for my final year project I am looking to develop a solar powered drone. The aim is for the drone to charge a small battery/capacitor using an attached solar panel whilst on the ground. Once it detects it has enough charge it will fly to the pre-set location, land and charge up again for the next flight.
I am thinking of using an APM 2.6 or Pixhawk for the project..
How feasible would this be?
Replies
Robbie, are you still working on this solar powered drone project? I've built several and may be able to share some ideas
Sounds like a brilliant idea and with a little imagination nowhere near the edge of any technical envelopes whatsoever. Personally I'd keep it simple, light, slow and efficient. Remember all the best idea's are simple. I'd make the frame the solar sail and form it to create a wing profile to facilitate frugal power consumption, huge props and slow, slow motors, a simple board to trigger arm, launch mission and dissarm at set power levels. I'd stick with Lipo's you'll get a few miles out on a few hours charge. The profiled solar panel wing come frame idea could make a massive difference in how much power is need to maintain course. Even if the design was traditional multi theres no shame in small hops and long charges. Good luck with your project
Your never going to get this to work using independent cells. There brittle, and need to be ran in series parallel and usually encased. I could however seeing something like that flying wing you can get with no real cargo compartment, and having it roll out flexible solar cells and have one on each wing trailing the plane. that and a low kv motor with a large prop, and perhaps some of the of the motors wound for brushless gimbals doing the rolling out and retracting.
Your timing might be right to use a VTOL-Airplane styled quad. There seems to be a lot of development going on in that direction. Something like this:
http://www.cranfieldaerospace.com/news/2010/vtol-uav-to-meet-istar-...
but maybe built like a Quad, and able to go horizontal. That way you can have the surface area you need for the solar panels and not have to worry about stowing them in flight as they would be your wings.
Could you build an unmanned car or a boat instead of a drone?
This would allow you to verify your design and go further step by step.
Perfectly feasible.
Starting with extremely light and efficient cells is key here. That means forgetting an off the shelf solar array and encapsulate your own super light custom items.
I have done the number on a couple of 'solar hopper' designs. One is a small 300mm sized mini using four A-300 cells, a micro mppt and 1300mAh 3S and the other is a larger 450mm sized version using 12 cells and a 4000mAh 3S. The arrays are divided into 4-12 pieces and deploy with a lightweight rotary mechanism kinda like a chinese fan. When stowed it forms 4-12 layers with no folds (separate flat arms essentially) positioned at the back of the craft.
Both designs offer full charge within 2-4 hours in direct sun and offer a full flight time - something like 4 minutes for the mini and 12-minutes for the 450.
I have no specific application for these designs yet (I just love PV cells - and have been working on a few designs that might be marketable at some stage) although it seems it would be useful for persistent surveillance.
May I ask what your application is?
May I see some pictures of your project? Sounds really interesting! Thank you!
Mike
I will do a detailed post on these once I have worked out the kinks.
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/development-help-tethered-uav-to-...
If you are only travelling a few metres why not roll or be thrown
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