X-Platform for Medium to High Altitude Aerial Data Collection

Deploying new technologies to extend the endurance of UAV’s

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have been deployed for a wide range of applications. In the past decade, and specifically in the past few years, civil applications of UAV’s (or commonly known as a drone) have been developed a lot. Some of the main civil applications of UAV’s include:

• Agriculture

• Aerial remote sensing

• Mining

• Photography and film production

• Fixed asset inspection (oil & gas pipelines, electricity pylons, railway, etc.)

• Product delivery

• Wild life research & preservation

• Greenhouse emission monitoring

• Border management

• Traffic monitoring

• Fire fighting & disaster management

• Search & rescue

• Police operations & investigations

Endurance is a key parameter for most of these applications. In the recent years, there have been enormous advances in the enabling technologies required for extending the endurance of UAV’s, from high-efficiency electric motors to high-performance propellers and high-density Li-polymer batteries. On the other hand, the solar cell technology has experienced significant advances in these years. The efficiency of the solar cells has been doubled in the past two decades and with using advanced materials, having a flexible solar cell that can adjust its shape to the surface (such as the wing surface) is completely possible.