Eternal Flight

Eternal Flight's goal is to address the problem of the short battery life in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by allowing the ability to operate continuously without the need to land. This is achieved using a novel system called IFS (In-Flight Switching), in which a larger "tanker" drone switches the drained battery of the smaller "receiver" drone, effectively increasing the receiver drone's time in flight. The receiver locates the position of the tanker drone using geolocation and positions itself above the tanker. The receiver then lowers itself slowly and lands on top of the tanker using a controls algorithm based on computer vision and AprilTags. The custom battery switching mechanism slides a new battery into the battery holder on the receiver drone, and simultaneously pushes out the drained battery. After the battery switching procedure is complete, the receiver is free to take off with a full battery.