Nanoveu’s ECS-DoT Chip Achieves Improved Drone Flight Endurance with Reduced Power Consumption

Nanoveu (ASX: NVU) wholly-owned subsidiary Embedded AI Systems (EMASS) has released landmark results from a Phase 2 drone evaluation program using its ECS-DoT ultra-low-power AI chip.

The findings highlight significant gains in drone flight endurance, recognised as the biggest constraint on UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) performance and commercial adoption.

Testing showed that ECS-DoT can extend flight times without requiring larger batteries or heavier hardware, opening new possibilities for scale in the delivery, agriculture, defence and inspection markets.

Endurance Improvements

ECS-DoT delivered exceptional improvements in drone flight endurance in more than 300 simulation scenarios across the full spectrum of commercial, industrial and tactical classes, and under varied payloads, wind profiles and mission conditions.

This included the quadcopter platform — the most common drone design typically featuring four rotors and suitable for consumer and enterprise markets — which achieved up to 80% improvement in mission endurance with a 60% average extended flight time over baseline.

The hexacopter — which features six rotors for enhanced stability and higher payload capacity, and is widely used in agriculture, logistics and terrain mapping — delivered up to 75% improvement in flight endurance under payload-intensive stress testing.

Octocopter heavy-lift drones — with eight rotors for industrial inspections, defence applications and and professional cinematography — delivered consistent flight endurance of up to 85% with an average 57% improvement, and proved viable even in complex UAV systems with high inertia and mission-critical requirements.

Performance Gains

The evaluation program validated the robust nature of ECS-DoT across different operating environments, with performance gains aligning to real-world demands without the need to change batteries, propulsion systems, or airframes.

The technology achieved the improvements purely through the use of smarter control using ECS-DoT’s energy-efficient AI engine, which consumes less than 1 megawatt of power during operation.

Nanoveu based simulations and testing were on Gazebo with ArduPilot, a widely-adopted open-source robotics simulator used by NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The simulator provided high-fidelity aerodynamics, sensor noise modelling and atmospheric disturbance profiles, stress-testing ECS-DoT under realistic operating conditions.

Refinement Milestone

EMASS founder Mohamed M Sabry Aly said the evaluation program was a milestone in the refinement of ECS-DoT technology.

“Flying significantly longer with radically less power is an achievement that many thought impossible,” he said.

“These results demonstrate that endurance is no longer defined by battery size — using ECS-DoT’s sub-milliwatt AI engine, every electron is turned into range so we are adding flight minutes while simultaneously redefining the efficiency frontier of autonomous aviation.”

Mr Aly said the company would commence direct engagement with global drone and avionics manufactures with a view to embedding ECS-DoT into next-generation flight platforms targeting the UAV market, which analysts project will grow to more than USD$165 billion by 2030.