So Fr Robert Ballecer, SJ I remember seeing photovoltaic fabric on stupid things like swimsuits...

[G+_T Nohands]

So Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ I remember seeing photovoltaic fabric on stupid things like swimsuits for charging your phone, but better ideas like roll out awnings. I was curious if it could be used to charge a drone by automated unrolling and rolling on landing or takeoff? Or possibly extend flight time till power drain overcomes charging? So do you think that fabric is efficient enough to recharge within a decent day of light, would the charging of the power pack while in use or just in confined configuration cause a runaway charge, and does anyone know of anyplace that will sell the fabric to the public? Just curious...

[G+_Jason Marsh]

It comes down to the square area and efficiency of the solar cell. Rated watts times solar insolation. Depending on where you are, you may expect 5 or more hours of useable solar insolation, on average, per day. A 5 watt panel might make 25 watt hours or so. That wouldn't run much, and it might take several weeks to charge high-capacity lithium batteries on a cell that could be carried on a quad. It would provide relatively little power, and might cost more power to lift than it can provide.

 

When cells become ridiculously light, efficient, and inexpensive, I wouldn't doubt seeing a much greater power rating in something that wouldn't weight a quad down so bad.

 

Now, if you're talking fixed-wing and quite large, you can get nearly unlimited flight time out of an efficient climb-and-glide strategy.

[G+_T Nohands]

Jason Marsh I haven't even found any PV fabric at all for sell to run the efficiency calculations so how to set up any use so I'm not sure what's even out there and I'm wanting to know if any automated charging configuration would risk a runaway charge happening I've seen that solar drone in plane configuration built by Cal Tech and NASA that doesn't need to land, and half of it's efficiency is because it goes so high the photonic catch is nowhere near filtered by the atmosphere and can just glide on the wind that's jetstream powered using updrafts and turning in and out of the wind so after all it looks like it can do, those motors and props are mostly used to steer in yaw direction especially since the wing is body that's being lifted making it a boomerang with motors that barely run after climbing to that height and they actually have to land to replace the batteries and camera only because better tech keeps evolving. Going that high kills a battery in no time due to temp even if there was air dense enough for straight up rotary force in lift. So fixed wings lower down would still be more energy hungry than can charge so it can still go longer but will still run out of energy, but still very awesome. So I was thinking more of stop charge then go like the rover concept, more about data collecting than recreational.

[G+_Jason Marsh]

I think if you can get a controller accurate enough to land it on a charging pad you'll have a really good start. Charging could come through contacts on the landing gear. Placement of the quad on it's pad doesn't need to be extremely precise, and even polarity can be ignored by providing AC at the charge pad, with the "feet" of the quad connected to a bridge rectifier.

[G+_Jason Marsh]

Now that I think of it... there might already be an autonomous aerial system that employs such a scheme. I recall hearing/reading about quads or fixed-wing drones used to collect crop health data. Perhaps someone can find a reference and post it here, and you could borrow some concepts from that.