Some amazing engineer built a drone that can lift its own weight using only the electric power that it gets from an on-board solar panel and nothing else (no battery).
Video: I Built a Solar Powered Drone and it WORKS by Luke Maximo Bell
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
200 points (99.5% liked)
pics
28139 readers
1673 users here now
Rules:
1.. Please mark original photos with [OC] in the title if you're the photographer
2..Pictures containing a politician from any country or planet are prohibited, this is a community voted on rule.
3.. Image must be a photograph, no AI or digital art.
4.. No NSFW/Cosplay/Spam/Trolling images.
5.. Be civil. No racism or bigotry.
Photo of the Week Rule(s):
1.. On Fridays, the most upvoted original, marked [OC], photo posted between Friday and Thursday will be the next week's banner and featured photo.
2.. The weekly photos will be saved for an end of the year run off.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://mastodon.world/about
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is excellent, now pair it with a lightish battery to fill in any gaps in sun exposure and add lora and this is the start of emergency deployment of meshtastic. Imagine just tossing one of these up and it can stay up all day.
Uh no. This thing is really fragile and at the limit of what's technologically feasible. It won't survive in any real world application.
It's still fun to think about this stuff, maybe just maybe it will be feasible in far future.