Hybrid Drone

Published on 20 May 2022. Written by Baskaran K

In conventional drone lipo batteries are used as a power source where you need to charge for every particular time period. The charging time alone will be taking more time due to which you cannot do continues flying. By adding the IC engine and DC generator with the conventional drone you can build a hybrid drone.

Here you can combine advantages of both electric power and gas power for increasing the endurance of drone more than ten times than the commercial drone which uses the battery as the power plant.

DC generator runs with the miniature IC engine for charging the battery. Whenever fuels get over you can easily refill. This type of UAV will be used for outdoor applications in different areas. In this UAV, battery gets discharged and charged while flying itself.

Project Description:

FRAME: Frame type and size can be changed depending upon the payload
IC ENGINE: Miniature IC engine will be used as the power plant
DC GENERATOR: It is used for charging the battery
FUEL TANK: Any tank that can carry the fuel in it safely
FUEL: Petrol, methanol,etc..
FLIGHT CONTROLLER: The flight controller(autopilot) will be fixed over on the frame which controls all the motors automatically when it got pre-programmed by the software
GPS MODULE: This unit will help you to follow the waypoint which was pre-programmed in the software.
POWER MODULE: Power module is used to power the flight controller board
ESC: Electronic Speed Controller used for controlling the speed of the BLDC motor
PROPELLER: Its a device which converts the rotational motion into the thrust
BATTERY: Lipo battery for powering the electronic parts.
TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER::2.4GHZ TX and RX should be used. Both should have minimum of 5 channels.

Project Implementation:

Fix all the parts in the frame properly. The flight controller should be fixed properly into the center part of the frame which helps you get more stability.
Connect the battery to the power module of flight controller and do all the mandatory calibration using mission planner.
Setup the flight modes in the transmitter that you want to fly
Make the generator running by starting the IC engine
Now the drone is ready for flying

Software requirements:

Mission planner or Q-Ground control

Kit required to develop Hybrid Drone:

Technologies you will learn by working on Hybrid Drone:

Hybrid Drone

Project Description:

Project Implementation:

Software requirements:

Any Questions?

Subscribe for more project ideas