Utilizing Solar Drone to Solve the European Refugee Crisis: A 26-Hour Full-Automatic Search and Rescue Flight |

Editor's note: The author of this article is Philipp Oettershagen, source Robohub, the new wisdom made exclusive compilation, refused to reprint without permission!

Last year, AtlantikSolar created a new world record that extended the flight duration of solar drones weighing less than 50kg to 81 hours, a record that has not yet been broken. However, a year later, AtlantikSolar created a new milestone because it successfully achieved the first full-automatic (from take-off to landing) payload of a solar drone with a color camera and thermal camera. , completed a search and rescue mission of up to 26 hours.

Although the two previous continuous flight records of 81 hours and 28 hours were important milestones in Atlantik Solar’s ​​history, demonstrating AtlantikSolar’s ​​permanent continuous flight capability, they required pilots to manually control takeoffs and landings and were unable to carry any aerial imaging equipment. However, the tasks that our team actually performs need to have these elements at the same time, such as the ease of handling of the aircraft during the entire autonomic landing process, and whether it can carry imaging equipment to help the search and rescue team find refugees on the ground and at sea. For example, the European refugee crisis currently taking place in the Mediterranean Sea requires our drones to continuously report the airborne sensory intelligence to relevant authorities when carrying out search and rescue missions.

The 26-hour solar search flight was performed by AtlantikSolar AS-3 from July 19 to July 20, 2016. This flight is second to none globally. It includes the following features:

Permanent flight: 26 hours of day and night flight, to achieve a permanent flight of energy.

Fully automated flight: There was no pilot manual operation during the 26 hours of flight.

SaR load: The aircraft carried a total of 10 watts of 300 grams of weight (a color camera, a thermal camera, and an ODROID on-board computer with WLAN) to perform refugee detection missions throughout the day.

Environmental awareness: The aircraft can perform fully automatic up-flow tracking, which improves battery efficiency and speeds up charging.

The 26-hour flight started at 18:02 local time on July 19 local time in Sinville, Switzerland. The battery was full when it took off. The takeoff process is completely automatic: after all system checks have been completed, the aircraft is put into the air by manual firing, and then continues to fly, automatically flying to its first established waypoint without the pilot's control.

The drone's flight control technology is based on an ETHZ/3DR Pixhawk autopilot, which has a specific flight controller designed by the autonomous system laboratory. The machine is equipped with a color camera, a thermal camera, an on-board computer, and a wireless LAN to enable real-time live broadcast of captured images. The entire on-board equipment must be running until 9 pm, due to lack of light, after 9 o'clock, the color camera will be turned off. The battery will start charging quickly between 8 o'clock and by 9 o'clock, there will be 95% of electricity remaining. We have noticed that small solar drones such as the AtlantikSolar, which consumes 10 watts of power for all onboard equipment on the starter, pose a great challenge for their permanent flight. During the first few hours of flight at night, the aircraft consumed a total of 60 watts of electricity.

The actual search and rescue ability test began only at approximately 11 pm. Because the plane is completely flying in the dark, we can only see the aerial image of the infrared camera. At 23:05, the airborne system succeeded in discovering refugees lying in the low grass (homes surrounded by bushes, tents, cars, streets, etc., in which heat generators are particularly noticeable). The refugees’ detection was performed manually by ground operators based on live video. However, the next AtlantikSolar test flight will implement fully automated in-flight refugee detection (as tested in the ICARUS search and rescue project). All of these capabilities are integral elements in achieving a permanent flight and performing airborne refugee detection missions. We firmly believe that this will play a major role in solving pressing problems, such as the European refugee crisis near the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 and 2016.

Despite the wind has reached 8 meters per second, drone search and rescue support activities with infrared cameras continue to continue at night. On the morning of July 20th, local time, the sun began to rise. By 08:04, the battery's minimum power remained at 26%. Even with the additional 10 watts of electricity consumed, our surplus energy even exceeds our original forecast of 23%, which can be considered a success. In order to speed up the charging of the battery, the aircraft also automatically performs upshift heat tracing. Later in the morning, once the rising heat flow is encountered, this function will be activated. In this way, the aircraft can lift more than 100 meters of flying height several times. Similarly, this does not require any operation of the pilot. At 15:30, the battery is fully recharged.

After 26 hours of solar-powered flight, the aircraft automatically landed at the Sinville airport in Switzerland, ending the entire search and rescue mission. During landing, the aircraft relied on LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors to measure its distance from the ground. In general, this difficult-to-fly aircraft requires highly experienced pilots to control and land, and AtlantikSolar can safely perform automatic landings. Because the search and rescue support team is often unable to conduct a large number of drone flight training, the emergence of such fully automatic solar drones is critical for them. Its significant advantages in solar energy and high performance have benefited these search and rescue support teams.

Via robohub

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