Solar Powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, are gaining popularity around the world due to their ease of use and vast range of applications. The biggest issue with UAVs is their battery endurance. Drones on the market nowadays use serially connected lipo batteries to generate power. In continuous motion, these serially connected lipo batteries can offer continual power for up to one hour. The lack of power for continuous use limits the use of drones in several fields. The paper aims to develop a system model that can use the abundant form of sunlight to power an unmanned aerial vehicle. This paper describes a theoretical model that switches between battery and solar panel based on the available power. The former part of the paper describes a basic model for the switching circuitry and the latter part describes a switching Circuit that switches between the solar panel and battery based on the power requirement during various levels of flight. The system is developed using MATLAB/SIMULINK model.