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
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yeah it's really really fragile. they show it in the video, one of the panels broke because a cat stepped on it. obviously not very suited for real-world deployment.
however i do wonder why they use polycrystalline silicon and not just amorphous silicon? I mean 20% efficiency instead of 8% makes a difference but i did some rough maths and it could still work with amorphous silicon if you use the area on the drone better. But amorphous silicon has the advantage of making a very thin and flexible layer that doesn't break easily. It's essentially more like a flexible piece of cloth instead of a solid object. Maybe worth a consideration.