Team Daedalus builds a solar‑powered autonomous aircraft that can fly for multiple hours while generating up to 90 % of its power from onboard photovoltaic cells. The platform carries interchangeable thermal and optical sensors and streams real‑time video via LTE/5G to fire agencies for continuous, low‑cost wildfire detection and monitoring.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Wildfire monitoring requires persistent aerial observation over large, remote areas, but conventional manned aircraft and satellite passes are limited by fuel constraints, high operational costs, and infrequent revisit times.
Solution
Team Daedalus develops a solar‑powered autonomous aircraft that harvests sunlight to sustain long‑duration flights while maintaining precise flight control. The Lapyx 4 prototype incorporates a 4 m wingspan airframe with 225 W of high‑efficiency photovoltaic cells, enabling continuous power generation during daylight operations. An integrated autopilot manages energy budgeting, flight dynamics, and navigation without ground‑station intervention. The platform supports interchangeable sensor payloads for real‑time thermal imaging and optical surveillance, transmitting data via secure telemetry to ground analysts. By combining renewable energy with autonomous flight, the system delivers persistent, low‑cost aerial coverage for early wildfire detection and situational awareness.
Target Audience
Primary customers are governmental forest‑fire agencies, civil‑protection organizations, and research institutions that require continuous, low‑cost aerial surveillance for wildfire early‑warning and monitoring.
Features
- 225 W solar array bonded to composite wing surfaces, delivering up to 90 % of in‑flight power demand under typical sun conditions
- Fully integrated flight‑control suite with adaptive energy‑management algorithms that balance power generation, storage, and consumption
- Modular payload bay compatible with infrared, multispectral, and high‑resolution RGB cameras for flexible sensing missions
- Real‑time telemetry link using LTE/5G bands, providing live video streams and health metrics to a cloud‑based monitoring dashboard
- Redundant avionics architecture with fail‑safe autopilot modes for safe recovery in case of sensor or power anomalies
- Lightweight carbon‑fiber airframe optimized for high lift‑to‑drag ratio, extending endurance to multiple hours of continuous flight
- Open‑source flight software stack based on PX4, allowing rapid iteration and community contributions