Exploiting Light To Enhance The Endurance and Navigation of Lighter-Than-Air Micro-Drones

TL;DR

This work addresses the endurance and GPS-denied navigation challenges of micro-drones by developing a self-sustaining LTA platform that harvests light energy and navigates with a single light beacon. A CFD-informed, closed-loop simulator enables fair, physics-based comparison of LTA designs, leading to the GT-MAB baseline as the most stable and agile option. By integrating solar energy harvesting on a modular envelope and evaluating three light-based navigation strategies, the authors demonstrate sustainable operation under daylight illumination and reliable 7 m single-beacon guidance in indoor and moderate outdoor conditions. The study provides a practical pathway toward persistent, autonomous LTA drones for large indoor spaces and energy-aware monitoring, highlighting the trade-offs between buoyancy, aerodynamics, energy harvesting, and lightweight sensing. The work lays groundwork for scalable, low-infrastructure deployments of long-endurance aerial systems.

Abstract

Micro-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly expanding into tasks from inventory to environmental sensing, yet their short endurance and unreliable navigation in GPS-denied spaces limit deployment. Lighter-Than-Air (LTA) drones offer an energy-efficient alternative: they use a helium envelope to provide buoyancy, which enables near-zero-power drain during hovering and much longer operation. LTAs are promising, but their design is complex, and they lack integrated solutions to enable sustained autonomous operations and navigation with simple, low-infrastructure. We propose a compact, self-sustaining LTA drone that uses light for both energy harvesting and navigation. Our contributions are threefold: (i) a high-fidelity simulation framework to analyze LTA aerodynamics and select a stable, efficient configuration; (ii) a framework to integrate solar cells on the envelope to provide net-positive energy; and (iii) a point-and-go navigation system with three light-seeking algorithms operating on a single light beacon. Our LTA-analysis, together with the integrated solar panels, not only saves energy while flying, but also enables sustainable operation: providing 1 minute of flying time for every 4 minutes of energy harvesting, under illuminations of 80klux. We also demonstrate robust single-beacon navigation towards a light source that can be up to 7m away, in indoor and outdoor environments, even with moderate winds. The resulting system indicates a plausible path toward persistent, autonomous operation for indoor and outdoor monitoring. More broadly, this work provides a practical pathway for translating the promise of LTA drones into a persistent, self-sustaining aerial system.

Figures (29)

• Figure 1: Main contributions: (1) Analyzing different LTA designs to identify the optimal one. (2) Enabling the placement of solar cells while balancing harvesting and aerodynamic properties. (3) Designing a robust navigation algorithm that works with a single light source.
• Figure 2: Propulsive System Comparison. All platforms have four rotors but aligned in different ways.
• Figure 3: Simulation Pipeline. Our contributions are highlighted in red boxes. We provide (1) a CFD component (Computational Fluid Dynamics) to model propeller and damping (drag) forces from first principle physics and (2) a new drone controller system to analyze three different navigation algorithms that operate with a single light source.
• Figure 4: Comparison of the BEAVIS and GT-MAB platform designs with our enhanced simulator.
• Figure 5: Estimation of linear and quadratic terms to simulate Damping/Drag forces.