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A team led by Qi Mingjing and Yan Xiaojun, professors at the School of Energy and Power Engineering at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, has successfully developed CoulombFly, an electrostatic aerial vehicle that relies on pure natural light to achieve take-off and continuous flight. The micro-aircraft is powered by a new electrostatic motor as the engine core, which will greatly increase the flight time of the micro-aircraft and expand its application range in the future. The results were recently published online in the journal Nature and recommended on the Home of both Nature and Science.
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According to reports, thanks to the characteristics of small size, light weight, and high mobility, the micro aircraft can perform special tasks such as taking pictures, detecting and transporting in a small space, and has a wide range of application prospects in the field of national economy. However, such aircraft generally have the pain point of short flight time. When the weight of the aircraft is less than 10 grams, the flight time is generally not more than 10 minutes. This is because micro aircraft generally use traditional electromagnetic motors as the driving components of the engine, and the electromagnetic motors have high speed and high heat generation after miniaturization, and the energy conversion efficiency decreases sharply. After the efficiency of the miniature electromagnetic motor decreases, if the natural sunlight with convenient power supply is used as the energy source, it is difficult to meet the flight demand due to the limited area of the solar cell.
In order to solve the above problems, the team sought a breakthrough in the principle of micro engines, proposed a new electrostatic drive scheme, developed a micro electrostatic motor with low speed, low heat generation and high efficiency under small size, and successfully tested the electrostatic aircraft CoulombFly. The aircraft is mainly composed of an electrostatic engine and an ultra-lightweight high-voltage power supply, which has the advantages of low power consumption and high lift, and realizes the take-off and continuous flight of a micro aircraft under pure natural light energy supply for the first time.
静电飞行器CoulombFly
According to reports, with the help of miniature electrostatic motors and ultra-lightweight high-voltage power supplies, the whole machine of CoulombFly is only the size of a palm (wingspan 20 cm), lighter than a piece of A4 paper (4.21 grams), and the size and weight are 1/10 and 1/600 of the world's smallest and lightest solar aircraft respectively. The team further proposed an ultra-miniature electrostatic aircraft with a wingspan of 8 mm and a mass of 9 milligrams, with a flight power consumption of less than 1 milliwatt, demonstrating the great potential of electrostatic motors in the further miniaturization of aircraft.
It is reported that the previous highest-level achievement in this field is the Robobee aircraft published by Harvard University in Nature in 2019, which still needs to use artificial light sources (three times the sunlight) to achieve continuous flight. This achievement of the Beihang team can achieve continuous flight with only natural light, which can greatly expand the scope of use of such aircraft, and is a milestone in the development process of micro aerial vehicles.
Article source: Science and Technology Daily
Video and image source: Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics official website, Nature
Link to the original paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07609-4
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