Motivation

With a little bit software it has become amazingly easy to make things fly. There are people who make stones fly, use leafblowers to power RC planes or building solar-powered, autonomous-flying airplanes. This made me wonder if it is possible to create something out of commercially available materials that can potentially fly "indefinitely". My dream, of course, would be to make a round-the-world flight without a stopover.

To define a bit more realistic goal without loosing to claim that it would be theoretically possible, I wanted to somehow enable a stopover, which would allow the batteries to be recharged.

The first thing i could come up with, that are safe to land and can be found via satellite images are lakes. It seems like i need skids. If we now add 1 and 1 together I would like to have an autonomous flying airplane, which recharges (feeds) itself by solar power and rests on water for energy. A duck.

Built from parts availiable at the hardware store

The core frame is designed with parts that are available in the hardware store. The basic material used is XPS, aluminum, hot glue and partly wood.

Autopilot

The central computing unit consists of a Raspberry pi and a Navio2 with ardupilot and ROS. This controls both the waypoint mission and eventually the automated landing on water.

Solar powered (upcoming)

The flight time is maximized by solar cells on the wings, which charge the duck's batteries both when resting on the lake and in the air.