World's lightest and smallest sunlight-powered rotorcraft created

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you.

A new paper published in Nature details the creation of a new type of electrostatic flyer, which uses sunlight to power its propulsion system and achieve flight.

In the new paper, a team of researchers from China's Beihang University explained that the newly designed flyer uses an electrostatic propulsion system consisting of a motor, a 4-inch propeller, a high-voltage power converter, and solar cells. The above video explains that the motor consists of a rotor and a stator. The stator is made up of eight pairs of alternating positive and negative electrodes arranged in a ring.

Each of these electrodes has a brush attached to it that transfers charge to the rotor blades. When a high direct-current voltage is applied to the electrodes, electrostatic fields are generated and drive the rotor. As the rotor spins, its blades alternatively pass over the positive and negative electrodes, transferring charge and continuing the rotation. This process keeps the propeller spinning.

The team points out this design of a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) could have applications for environmental monitoring and search and rescue. However, this design isn't without its limitations, as there currently isn't a mechanism for controlling the direction of its flight, and it's solar power source makes it extremely susceptible to sudden changes in lighting.

"The sunlight-powered sustained flight demonstration represents a notable milestone in developing micro-air vehicles (MAVs) with long flight duration. Utilizing an electrostatic-driven propulsion system for flight is an innovative and effective method in MAVs and nano aerial vehicles and provides another option for vehicle design," the authors said

"CoulombFly, an electrostatic flyer consisting of an electrostatic-driven propulsion system with a high lift-to-power efficiency of 30.7 g W−1 and an ultralight kilovolt power system with a low power consumption of 0.568 W, to realize solar-powered sustained flight of an MAV under natural sunlight conditions (920 W m−2). The vehicle's total mass is only 4.21 g, within 1/600 of the existing lightest sunlight-powered aerial vehicle," reads the study's description

The smallest flyer the team created with this motor design had a wingspan of just eight millimeters.