Reply to post:

Boffins build smallest drone to fly itself with AI

Stoneshop
FAIL

Yes but the Crazyflie 2.0 quadcopter it is on has a 240mAh battery, takes 40 minutes to charge and it can then fly for 7 minutes.

That comes out as a total current draw of around 2A, and a power consumption of some 7W (taking the battery going from 100% to near empty in those 7 minutes).

The maximum payload is 15g leaving little margin for it to be solar powered unless you want a duty cycle of about one flight per year.

Poking around on AliExpress to find a panel weighing less than 15g, several suitable candidates come up. With a power output of 0.25 .. 0.3W they can recharge the battery in a day or two, so that's 150 flights per year.

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