SINCHDrone UAV: Preparations for Technology Integration and Testing

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are steadily growing more popular and accessible in both the commercial and military industries, but today's UAVs are severely limited in their mission capabilities by low flight times.Many commercially available UAV's can only sustain maximum flight times of twenty minutes.Project BANSHEE UAV (Battery as iNtegrated Structure High Endurance Experimental UAV) is a multidisciplinary team of students from aerospace, electrical, computer and mechanical engineering degree paths with the goal of extending the flight time and endurance of UAVs through various battery regeneration and storage techniques.Proposed methods of in-flight battery generation include the replacement of a UAV's upper wing skins with solar panels and lower wing skins with induction coils capable of charging by flying over AC distribution powerlines.The UAV's wing spars will be replaced by electrolyte batteries, which will decrease the overall weight of the vehicle if they prove successful enough to replace the on-board batteries.Project BANSHEE plans to develop and manufacture a SINCHDrone (Solar and Induction Charged ultra-high endurance Drone) UAV VTOL hybrid by modifying a commercial Volantex ASW-28 fixed wing RC airplane with VTOL spars and four quadcopter motors and propellers to be used as a technology demonstrator vehicle which can provide proof of concept of the success of the battery regeneration techniques listed above.Previous years' Cal Poly Pomona BANSHEE student teams initiated and developed the basic concepts and technologies approach for the SINCHdrone In-flight rechargeable UAV concepts.This paper builds on that previous work and discusses further developments in the SINCHDrone structural design improvements, updated baseline endurance testing, and progress in developing the solar cell skin.Once the SINCHDrone has proved the ability to extend the endurance of UAVs Project BANSHEE will begin modification of a commercial Baby Shark hybrid UAV with the same techniques.