Ok, this is something really cool I stumbled upon today.
Let's first start with a video
So what you just witnessed is a rest flight of CoulombFly, the lightest solar-powered drone.
Developed by researchers at china, this little guy fits an average human palm and weights just 4.21 grams and can carry a payload of roughly 1.59 g.
According to the guys who made it, it's about 10 times as small as and roughly 600 times as light as the previous smallest sunlight-powered aircraft, which a quadcopter that’s 2 meters wide and weighs 2.6 kilograms. I pretty much know nothing on the subject so I'll just take their word lol 😆
Here's another test video
CoulombFly uses a new innovative propulsion system that is more efficient than traditional methods that allows it to fly for much longer periods of time.
Here's a quote from Mingjing Qi professor at Beihang and leading scientist of the project
My ultimate goal is to make a super tiny flying vehicle, about the size and weight of a mosquito, with a wingspan under 1 centimeter
Anyways, nifty little thing. Here's a link to the article where I came across this thing if you'd like to read more on it. And here's a link to the actual paper, yawn!
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