Sustainable Operations For Aerial Robotics

Background:

The use of commercial drones in our society has seen a dramatic increase. In 2025, There’s over 850,000 drones registered with the FAA. Whether it be medicine/commercial delivery, agriculture, search and rescue, or other applications, drones are evidently important in many societal functions. With this increasing demand, it is important that these drones are able to operate efficiently and effectively. Commercial drones can fly for up to 8 hours, with flight range varying with drone size. However there is definitely room for improvement, and Team SOAR hopes to develop a method for improving UAV efficiency.

Our Research Question:

How can thermal updrafts be used to prolong the flight of UAVs?

What Team SOAR Will Be Doing:

Over the next 3 years, SOAR will be doing extensive research on how to harness the power of thermal updrafts, similar to birds, to prolong the flight-time of UAVs. We will be looking to expand on computer vision models to help our drones be able to identify thermal updrafts and complete missions. Through testing existing UAV platforms, we also hope to optimize the geometry of UAV platforms to better allow the UAVs to rise in thermal updrafts. Since testing UAVs can be time consuming and sometimes expensive, we plan to use 3D simulation within Unreal Engine, alongside our actual field testing, to test our drones in virtual environments. Through all of these methods, Team SOAR will be innovating drone technology and completing our goal of harnessing thermal updrafts.

Why Your Donations Are Important:

Your donations are very important. Team SOAR is a very engineering heavy project, meaning we will have many expenses. On our page, you can see what your donations will be put towards. Any amount is helpful!

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