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<p>This review considers the urgent requirement of a synthesis of the development of solar drone technology while comprising the integration of aerodynamics, energy technologies, artificial intelligence, and operational planning to address the disadvantages of the flight duration, structural efficiency, and autonomous surveillance. A thematic review of the scientific literature is designed based on the PRISMA model and searched the articles published between 2018 and 2026 on the platform of ScienceDirect and SpringerLink, which found high-quality papers on three themes of practical implementation: design and aerodynamics, AI-driven inspection, and operational applications. The major findings are that composite sandwich box beam and integrated battery-structure topology represent significant advances in mechanical performance of wingspans of 5–80&#xa0;m, whereas perovskite solar cells have recorded power conversion efficiencies of 24.71% (small size) and 20.05% (module), which can be used to extend flight time by 10.45%. Convolutional neural networks (YOLOv5s) in AI-enabled monitoring have a maximum mean average precision of 89% to detect defects, and random forest classifiers have a high accuracy of 91.3% to monitor dust in real time, which saves 60–75% in the cost of manual inspection. On an operational level, cleaning using solar drones lowers production cost to up to 1.6&#xa0;$&#xa0;kWh<sup>−1</sup> with levelized cost of 0.08–0.12 $/panel and building-integrated photovoltaic wireless charging has transfer efficiency of 95.7%. The review finds that despite the major advancement in the field of technology, notably in energy conversion, structural optimization, and automated inspection, there are still critical issues, such as the durability of materials, the scalability of high-efficiency cells, the lack of data on which AI can be trained, regulatory uncertainty, and the economic feasibility of small-scale implementations. The focus of future studies should therefore include the long-term field validation, sustainable material development, edge AI optimization, and standardized regulatory frameworks to allow the solar drone systems to be used widely commercially.</p>

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Advances in solar drone technology: a multi-disciplinary review of aerodynamics, energy systems, AI-driven monitoring, and applications

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月24日

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  • Farhan Lafta Rashid,
  • Mudhar A. Al-Obaidi,
  • Mushtaq K. Abdalrahem,
  • Muhammed Abdelhameed,
  • Emad Qasem Hussein,
  • Atef Chibani

摘要

This review considers the urgent requirement of a synthesis of the development of solar drone technology while comprising the integration of aerodynamics, energy technologies, artificial intelligence, and operational planning to address the disadvantages of the flight duration, structural efficiency, and autonomous surveillance. A thematic review of the scientific literature is designed based on the PRISMA model and searched the articles published between 2018 and 2026 on the platform of ScienceDirect and SpringerLink, which found high-quality papers on three themes of practical implementation: design and aerodynamics, AI-driven inspection, and operational applications. The major findings are that composite sandwich box beam and integrated battery-structure topology represent significant advances in mechanical performance of wingspans of 5–80 m, whereas perovskite solar cells have recorded power conversion efficiencies of 24.71% (small size) and 20.05% (module), which can be used to extend flight time by 10.45%. Convolutional neural networks (YOLOv5s) in AI-enabled monitoring have a maximum mean average precision of 89% to detect defects, and random forest classifiers have a high accuracy of 91.3% to monitor dust in real time, which saves 60–75% in the cost of manual inspection. On an operational level, cleaning using solar drones lowers production cost to up to 1.6 $ kWh−1 with levelized cost of 0.08–0.12 $/panel and building-integrated photovoltaic wireless charging has transfer efficiency of 95.7%. The review finds that despite the major advancement in the field of technology, notably in energy conversion, structural optimization, and automated inspection, there are still critical issues, such as the durability of materials, the scalability of high-efficiency cells, the lack of data on which AI can be trained, regulatory uncertainty, and the economic feasibility of small-scale implementations. The focus of future studies should therefore include the long-term field validation, sustainable material development, edge AI optimization, and standardized regulatory frameworks to allow the solar drone systems to be used widely commercially.