The prototype of a new drone capable of long-distance surveillance operations over oceans has been revealed by the MITRE corporation, which says the 3D printed craft can recharge itself during extended flights using solar panels on its wings.
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Ørsted says it’s now the world’s first offshore wind company to use autonomous giant drones to transport cargo to turbines.
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Singapore-based drone technology player H3 Dynamics is joining forces with Sitemark – a specialist AI-analytics company from Belgium – to launch a new robots-as-a-service solution for autonomous solar farm monitoring and inspection.
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Santa Monica-based aerial imaging and data processing specialist DroneBase is strengthening its services to solar energy clients with piloted airplane surveys to provide annual audits of infrastructure supplementing the company’s routine drone inspections.
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AI Clearing, a business intelligence (BI) solutions provider that uses drone data to track construction progress, says it has trained its artificial intelligence models to recognize key objects installed during solar farm construction.
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Ever dream of piloting a drone that can stay aloft longer than the usual 30- to 35-minute battery charge? Meet the K1000ULE, an electric-, solar-, and thermal-powered UAV that flew for 26 straight hours this summer.
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Airbus has announced its Zephyr solar-powered high-altitude platform system (HAPS) drone has completed a barrage of summer tests in Arizona, including what the European aviation consortium described as a record-setting 36 days of flight time spread over a two-day mission.
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French company XSun specializes in solar-powered drones – and has produced a pretty impressive craft, indeed. Its SolarXOne fixed-wing aircraft not only soaks up and stores the sun rays that power it, but also packs onboard tech that allows it to make its own decisions during flights.
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Facebook’s (soon to be) solar-powered, wifi serving, laser mesh network drone, the Aquila, is retiring to the V&A – the world’s leading museum of art and design – in London.
The plane has completed two successful test flights, one each in 2016 and 2017. Facebook’s goal is to create a broad network of technology to deliver internet connectivity to the 1.6 billion on earth without access.
Researchers testing cutting-edge unmanned aerial vehicle technology went to the 24 hours a day sunlight of Greenland to power ‘perpetual’ solar drone flights.
The main goal of the project from the manufacturer’s perspective was to find a practical application of a solar-powered drone that could fly indefinitely, as there’d been few real-world uses. To partial success, the group tested the ‘First-ever solar-powered flight in the Arctic’ on June 20th.
