ASL's AtlantikSolar UAV breaks world endurance record with 81 hour flight
Two weeks after having demonstrated AtlantikSolar’s first 24-hour flight , the fixed-wing team at ETH Zurich’s Autonomous Systems Lab has now achieved a continuous flight of its 6.8kg AtlantikSolar Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that spanned a total of 2316km and 81.5 hours (4 days and 3 nights) and has broken the flight endurance world record for all UAVs below 50kg total mass.
Two weeks after having demonstrated AtlantikSolar’s first 24-hour flight, the fixed-wing team at ETH Zurich’s Autonomous Systems Lab has now achieved a continuous flight of its 6.8kg AtlantikSolar Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that spanned a total of 2316km and 81.5 hours (4 days and 3 nights) and has broken the flight endurance world record for all UAVs below 50kg total mass. In addition, the fully solar-powered flight is the longest-ever flight of a low-altitude long-endurance (LALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the second-longest flight among any UAV, and the fifth-longest flight ever shown by any aircraft worldwide. From an applications perspective, the flight proves the central commercially-promising advantage of solar-powered UAVs, i.e. their capability to stay airborne for multiple days while providing telecommunication services in large-scale disaster-scenarios or live-imagery during industrial sensing and inspection missions.