Raphael Domjan, Swiss Aviator, came close to reaching the distance of a world record while flying a solar Stratos plane on Sunday. He departed from Sion Airport in Southwestern Switzerland, reaching an altitude of 8224 meters; it lasted for four hours. Domjan, tagged as an eco-explorer for his aviation focus, and is known for his eco-friendly ambitions. According to him, achieving a height of more than 10,000 meters is still a dream for him to come true soon, hopefully.

Raphael Domjan Sets New SolarStratos Altitude Record

As per TechExplore, In 2010, Andre Borschberg set the record for the highest flight in a solar plane for 9,235 meters as a Swiss pilot flying the Solar Impulse. Domjan won’t just break the record of Borschberg but also intends to fly to the same altitude just like commercial jets. The challenge is as important as Solar Stratos has a boundary on the altitude that it can reach and while relying on solar power only.

The Road to 10,000 Meters: A Green Aviation Dream

Prior to this attempt, Domjan completed a practice flight on July 31, reaching an altitude of 6,589 meters, which was a record for the SolarStratos. Last Friday, he attempted a flight, but the thermals which usually aid in altitude gain were absent. He decided to turn back to conserve battery power for future attempts.

Earlier this week, conditions proved more favorable, leading to a new record altitude for the SolarStratos. As an innovation, the plane has solar panels on its 24.8-meter wings, which power its batteries. During the flight’s solar charging cycle, the plane’s batteries will automatically recharge to full. Domjan and his team are preparing for the next record attempt to make sure it will be a guaranteed success.

Asked about the 10,000 meter target, Domjan believes it is a target which will be achieved only by relentless attempts. For him, it is about the achievement, and an achievement only possible through determination and resilience on the aviations of the future as a green revolution.

A flying robot inspired by the anatomy of a maple seed, samaras, was developed by researchers of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). This new monocopter, besides flying much longer than other drones of its size, proves its superiority by running on a single rotor for 26 minutes. This feat is a marked achievement, proving the goals of SUTD’s associate professor Foong Shaohui, who built a 50 minute flying drone for Singapore’s 50 year anniversary. Now, the focus shifts to efficiency in smaller designs.

Nature-Inspired Design Brings Breakthrough in Small Drone Efficiency

According to Techxplore, Nature proves to be the ultimate guide for the SUTD team, as they had previously designed quadcopters with no external help. In the case of maple seeds that spin and gently fall to the ground creating lift, the team built a singular powered wing monocopter. This improvement, while simple, also greatly enhances control, efficiency, effectiveness, and reduces weight.

The collective mix of human creativity with AI enabled tools to further enhance the designs fuel origami’s makes the monocopter a success. AI enabled tools allowed the team to simulate various shapes, angles, and weight before creating the final prototype. As a result, the team had a drone that is 32 grams while retaining the ability to endure more than other drones.

From 10-Year Challenge to Record-Breaking Maple Seed Monocopter

This small monocopter could be extremely beneficial for low-cost, long-duration missions. An example mission could be to transport instruments for measuring meteorological conditions. Taking home the Sustainability Winner award at the 2024 Dyson Awards felt like a decisive victory for monocopter, underscoring its potential for environmental monitoring missions. Now refinement efforts will target a larger payload, longer endurance, and extended range, all without adding weight.

The achievement shows the ten years of steady progress, which started from the SG50 quadcopter and evolved into the SG60 monocopter. It is planned for rollout during the 60th birthday of Singapore festivities. It has been guided by advanced engineering, insights from nature and on-board AI from the team has demonstrated the practical versatility and impressive performance of compact flying robots.

Elon Musk is hyping an upcoming Tesla ‘Full Self-Driving’ (FSD) update by claiming that it will have “less nag” – a far cry from its long-unfulfilled promise of unsupervised self-driving.

For the last few weeks, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been hyping a new FSD update that he claims will include “10x higher parameters.”

We already reported how FSD owners should manage their expectations based on the last time Musk claimed a significant increase in parameter count.

Other than the increase in parameter count and the timing for the “end of September”, the CEO didn’t elaborate much on the update.

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He again commented on it this weekend:

The FSD release in about 6 weeks will be a dramatic gain with a 10X higher parameter count and many other improvements. It’s going through training & testing now.

But this time he also added that the update should result in “much less nag”:

Once we confirm real-world safety of FSD 14, which we think will be amazing, the car will nag you much less.

“Nag” is what some people refer to as the alerts FSD gives drivers to stay attentive to the road.

Tesla requires all drivers to remain attentive to the road when using Autopilot or Full Self-Driving, and they are responsible for any mistakes made by the vehicle.

Musk has repeatedly promised that Full Self-Driving would eventually become unsupervised, but every time he shared a timeline, Tesla failed to deliver.

Electrek’s Take

We are talking about 6 weeks – meaning the end of September, which also happens to be the end of the third quarter.

Tesla will release the update just in time to justify recognizing some deferred revenue set aside from selling its Full Self-Driving package.

“Less nag” means nothing. 99% of the value of FSD is in unsupervised operation with responsibility on Tesla. That’s where the value lies, and we are still far from that.

Musk is now talking about FSD having “less nag” by the end of September. And then what? We should expect Tesla to go from that to taking responsibility for the system in customer cars by the end of the year? Please.

The best data available points to Tesla achieving about 400-500 miles between critical disengagements and the last time Tesla introduced a big parameter increase it resulted in roughly a 2x improvement.

At 800-1,000 miles between disengagement, Tesla would still be years away from unsupervised self-driving in customer vehicles.

Look, I have FSD. I’m incentivized for Tesla to deliver here. I want to believe, but to do so, I can only rely on the latest in a long series of unfulfilled promises from a known liar versus actual data pointing the other way.