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Autonomous Overhead Powerline Recharging for Uninterrupted Drone Operations [video]
- blacksmith_tb 3y agoPretty cool, though my take is that if it's recharging just from induction it's essentially stealing the electricity... I suppose if the owners of the lines want to have autonomous drones monitor their status, that's not stealing, but if you wanted to release some little flying vampire drones of your own which could run indefinitely that way, someone might be less amused.
- declan_roberts 3y agoI was trying to figure out exactly how it charges with just 1 pole. It must be induction in that case, right?
- dist-epoch 3y agoIt could have a small spool of wire to drop to the ground to make contact. This would allow the drone to rest on the wire while charging.
- bdamm 3y agoThis would vaporize the drone, the wire, and anyone or anything nearby, sending flaming battery and electronics shrapnel in many directions. High tension does not mess around.
- non-chalad 3y agoSee what happens to a branch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4ph-h7l_aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4ph-h7l_aM
- jcims 3y agoOr a conductor hauled up by fishing line https://youtu.be/mqRT7J86rco?si=Za9B-dA-VO-Fl5Z8 https://youtu.be/mqRT7J86rco?si=Za9B-dA-VO-Fl5Z8
- taneq 3y agoNot if you put a large enough resistor in the line. It might be enough just to extend a spike to bleed off charge, though.
- bdamm 3y agoThere's nothing gentle about 38kV. You're not going to lower down a line and bleed off some charge. Once there's a viable path to ground, current will flow all over whatever is making that path, including the very air around it. The entire drone, wire, and the air it is inside of will turn into vaporized plasma as if hit by a bolt of lightning. And 38kV is low voltage in the high-tension world. Creating current flows from a field is what induction is, so if you're imagining that you could just generate electricity from a field, well, that's what they're already doing. It doesn't take lowering a probe. You can just use an inductor.
- idiotsecant 3y agoThat is exactly opposite of what would keep the drone safe. In a power transmission network the earth is a conductive path. Touching a phase and touching earth allows the grid to push as much power through you as your impedance and grpund contact will allow.
- duskwuff 3y agoThat, and long spools of loose wire and spinning propellers are not a good combination.
- quickthrowman 3y agoThe link below is a video showing the explosion that would occur if someone attempted what you are describing. https://youtu.be/LCRfYIwFbxQ https://youtu.be/LCRfYIwFbxQ
- throwaway14356 3y agoIf it can make contact with the ground it should be able to charge from the static field. https://makezine.com/article/craft/1000-fluorescent-lights-p/ https://makezine.com/article/craft/1000-fluorescent-lights-p...
- pkage 3y agoFrom the video description: > A passively actuated gripping mechanism grasps the powerline cable during landing after which a control circuit regulates the magnetic field inside a split-core current transformer to provide sufficient holding force as well as battery recharging.
- nealabq 3y agoWhen the grippers close they probably close the loops of a coil that wraps around the wire. So it's harvesting the ever changing magnetic field that arises from AC current, independent of voltage. You can still get some power from coils that aren't wrapped around the wire but are still parallel. I think that's how wireless phone chargers work. You can also take power using a capacitor instead of an inductor, from the changing voltage (not current) in an AC line. Like when you hold a florescent tube vertical under a hi-power line, and it lights up.
- phanimahesh 3y agoThat is induction though. Acapacitor alone can not extract energy from a ac line. Inductance is what allows energy transfer here.
- delichon 3y agoThis could become a major power draw over decades. It's probably time to figure out a protocol. E.g. a cheap light small low power meter on the drone that can post the transaction to the electric company while in flight, signals to designate power lines as in or out of the system and their current price, etc. Solar roof owners could compete with the utilities. There are unicorns hiding in this forest. The vampires will be the charging drones that aren't associated with a transaction. So it's about as enforceable as a requirement that drones have accurate identifier transponders.
- deadbabe 3y agoWho cares? If they don’t want their power drawn they need to be burying their powerlines anyway.
- j-bos 3y agoAlternatively Who cares? If they don’t want their oil siphoned they need to be burying their pipelines anyway. Most would agree that unauthorized draws from common infrastructure resulting in loss is theft.
- 1minusp 3y agoCost of undergrounding power lines is large. Especially over the distribution network (in that there is a lot more of it over space)
- tarikjn 3y agoThere probably are exemptions for emergency or defense applications.
- wglb 3y agoIf that can be measured, I would be pretty surprised. I would project that the drain from all possible drone charging is orders of magnitude less than the e.g. coronal loss or the static radiation that blasts my ham radio. Any legal action would need to be able to document that loss, one would think.
- Terr_ 3y agoBut you agree the loss exists, right? It's simply difficult to detect from some aggregate noisy flow at a centralized location, because the system was never designed to make that easily measurable. The amount could be estimated by looking at how much flying the drones do between charges, or by suing for access to charging/position telemetry of the units.
- _visgean 3y agoright now the loss does not exist. Its a cool experiment. If this was a big thing the drone fleet operators would simply get some kind of legal agreement with the transmission operator. But overall we are talking about really small amounts of energy.
- Terr_ 3y ago> we are talking about really small amounts of energy Napkin-math time: I see 4 motors, searching the model-number suggests each has a max draw of ~380 watts, so let's assume it averages 1000 watts in operation, for 6 hours a day, with a local cost of electricity at $0.20 per kilowatt-hour, and this continues for one month. 1000*8/1000*$0.20*30 = $36 per month per drone. That's not give-a-penny-take-a-penny territory.
- SECProto 3y agoThat's bad napkin math. Per the video, it is charging at 50W. At worst, it would be charging 24hr/day, so 50Wx24h is 1.2kWh per day. Using your 20¢ rate, that's $0.24 per day or 7.20/month. That's the upper bound, assuming it only charges and does no work.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoIt's odd that people in the comments assume use without permission and stealing. You wouldn't attempt any of this without permission, regulatory approval and insurance, unless you wanted to be sued, prosecuted and go broke if something went wrong. How do people think the real world operates exactly?
- lolc 3y agoOh but the scenario where the drone does it without permission is just way more entertaining.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThree-quarters of a megavolt of electricity plus drones does seem like a lively mix.
- rtkwe 3y agoThere's no current though, the same way birds can sit safely on lines all day long.
- dclowd9901 3y agoThere is definitely current or there would be no wattage.
- pineaux 3y agoI dont know. There is definitely a flow of energy between the power line and the drone. But there is no closed circuit between them so there is no current flowing. I imagine there is a (slightly, almost not measureable) raised current in the powerline due to a lower resistance due to the parasitic voltage drop and phase shifting cause by the inductive load. So technically no current between the drone and the powerline. Although there is energy transfer. But there are probably lots of people here that understand the laws of electromagnetism a lot better than me.
- cryptonector 3y agoArmed forces don't care. Get it? The likeliest user of this technology will be armed forces.
- paulhart 3y agoMore likely it’ll be utility companies that want to do remote and autonomous inspection of the transmission network. It’s already a big business, but if you can run the drone the entire length of the line without relocating the base as frequently, or have no base at all and transmit data over 5G? Big wins.
- Animats 3y agoRight. Drones for power line inspection are common. Far easier than inspections involving bucket trucks, helicopters, or even people on the ground with binoculars. This will simplify that process. Especially for lines through rugged country, where following the line is difficult. Start the drone where the power line crosses a road, and then drive to another road crossing for pickup. Warning lights for aircraft which clamp onto power lines have been available for many years.[1] [1] https://clampco.it/obstruction-light-low-intensity-type-b-segs32ptl/ https://clampco.it/obstruction-light-low-intensity-type-b-se...
- nhma 3y agoPowerline inspection and maintenance are the primary use cases for this technology. And at least this particular system is in the early spinout process via https://www.ongrid.tech/ https://www.ongrid.tech/
- etrautmann 3y agoThe biggest use case for this would be inspecting the powerlines, so presumably not stealing in that case.
- cyanydeez 3y agoSecond is spy drones.
- causality0 3y agoI don't think you know how infinitesimal the amount of power would be. Assuming a Mavic Mini traveling at its maximum speed of 29 miles per hour, it could cross the continental united states in 99 hours for 36 cents worth of electricity.
- snypher 3y ago~2kwh of electricity is around 160 aH at 12V, surely the Mini is more than 20W power at top speed?
- 05 3y agoYeah, it’s easier to use lab test data from Mavic Mini 3 specs: 51 minutes flight time at 21kph [0]. The battery capacity is 28.4Wh [1]. So, 18.4/(21*51/60) = 1.6 Wh/km. Assuming US is 2800 miles (4500 km) wide, we get 7.2 kWh of energy under ideal conditions, without accounting for charging efficiency and the impact of the charging system weight on flight time. Edit: 21kph is the optimal speed for max flight time but not for the best energy efficiency per km. Most efficient speed is somewhere between that and the top speed. But this is the right order of magnitude at least. [0] https://mavicpilots.com/threads/mini-3-51-minute-flight-time.141293/ https://mavicpilots.com/threads/mini-3-51-minute-flight-time... [1] https://forum.dji.com/thread-291222-1-1.html https://forum.dji.com/thread-291222-1-1.html
- ortusdux 3y agoPrev. post / original publication: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39943807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39943807
- kernoble 3y agoReminds me of this video demonstrating this on the ground with a self wound inductor. I'm assuming the one on the drone is optimized for the voltage/freqency of that transmission line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLS8pbDNHbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLS8pbDNHbk
- AI_beffr 3y agoi had this idea in 2011
- flemhans 3y agoThere were previous projects doing it, as well
- ben_w 3y agoCongrats to the team. Semi-seriously: Yet another item on the list of ideas I totally came up with on my own, honest, I just never did the hard work to make it real. (I know, I know, my ideas count for nothing when I don't turn them into reality. Actually making hardware means solving a lot more problems than my imagination provides, and who likes facing those surprises in side-projects?)
- foobarbecue 3y agoYeah, this idea was pretty obvious -- both at LANL and JPL I worked in labs that were doing perching drones and we talked about landing on powerlines and charging inductively. The LANL work was 2013 and the JPL work was 2018. I think most "good ideas" are going to be thought of by thousands of people before they become a useful reality. Ideas per se really are pretty worthless and patents are only useful as a means of proxy warfare between large corporations, I'm afraid. Ever since I was a kid I've wanted to build a hanging chair something that latches onto powerlines and travels along them :-) Also reminds me of how I actually built a burrito delivery drone for fun that lowered a burrito on a winch a couple of years before the "tacocopter" story started doing the rounds on the news (early 2010s). It's interesting that drone delivery never made it beyond rural pharmaceuticals.
- pricechild 3y agoSemi serious: was that enough to have patented the idea yourself?
- ben_w 3y agoI believe you can get patents without a physical model? I wouldn't have bothered with a patent for something like this though. Probably is money in it now I think about it, but patents are just not the kind of thing I think much about.
- cdchn 3y agoYou can get a patent for something that doesn't even have to necessarily work.
- Havoc 3y agoWould this have energy loss in the same way a phone wireless charger has? Or is this just leeching energy that would be lost anyway
- WJW 3y agoNo this definitely drains energy from the power line.
- pnjunction 3y agoWow! Is there any project which allows collaborative SLAM? OSM/Mapillary for commercial drones basically.
- akira2501 3y agoIt's going to be a very costly operation to go retrieve one of those once it's "gripper" ultimately fails. That's hoping it fails closed instead of failing open. Getting these parked in the face of upcoming weather is not going to be particularly fun, either. Given that you need a solid alternate location anyways, why not just go there instead? Then we can build safe single function autonomous ground charging stations that a human being can just walk up to and service on foot. Too clever by half.
- numbsafari 3y agoI mean… who’s to say you aren’t operating these for nefarious purposes and the last thing you want to do is have them go back to a central location? Or if they are part of a defensive perimeter, or a long haul operation, where centralized service is problematic? These could be used for power line infrastructure observation and possibly even repairs at some point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThe application is for drones doing work in the field and needed to recharge on that basis, it's actually a very good solution for coverage of a large, possible remote, area. The alternative is a large number of charging locations which is very expensive. There's no need for alternate charging or parking in weather. Besides merely going into a hibernating state with a radio beacon and light in emergencies, recovery could be via a vehicle positioned in an optimal location relative to the drones where they can all converge and be collected. In the case of charging limitations you could execute more than one convergence location. Also the drones could be used to remove failed drones stuck on lines. Nope, this is fully clever.
- akira2501 3y agoI'm suggesting that hanging random amounts of weight off of power lines is probably not a great engineering plan, less so if the wind or heat or load picks up significantly. My concern isn't for the drones it's for the actual power infrastructure. Are the drones designed for inspection or for heavy lifting and applying mechanical leverage against other objects? Are you so sure they're going to be able to do both? It's trying to solve two problems at once, and while the solutions individually may be clever, combined they seem like a total waste and fraught with complications.
- bdamm 3y agoThis opens up all kinds of legal issues. The military applications could be very interesting as well.
- 7952 3y agoI would guess that in some juristictions the land owner the line sits on may have to be considered.
- mrinterweb 3y agoI can't imagine power companies would be ok with this. People go to jail for tapping into power lines. Energy theft from power lines is illegal. Even if this was somehow allowed by power companies, I wonder if they would be any weight considerations if multiple drones hooked on to the same line span. I see applications for this, but anyone operating these drones would need clearance from the power company they are tapping into.
- Reason077 3y ago> "I can't imagine power companies would be ok with this. People go to jail for tapping into power lines." Presumably it's the power companies (specifically, transmission network and distribution network operators) who will be most interested in this. They're increasingly using drones for infrastructure inspection, finding faults, etc.
- avs733 3y ago1000%. Funny enough my engineering capstone tried something very similar but much more stupidly complicated. Do it while flying a parabola with a winged drone. Never got the control system to work…crashed into a lot of local power lines. Our assumed customer was power companies doing inspection.
- underlogic 3y agoFor affordable long range assassination operations. Make it in clear matte plastic, quiet, low flying, add some obstacle avoidance and facial recognition perhaps. Quite a nasty package under 1500 dollars I bet. Could even be ultra small w poison darts too.
- cmilton 3y agoYou had me until poison darts!
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y agoShaped 10g C4 charges
- rkagerer 3y agoI presume the current transformer is spec'd for a particular range of current/voltage. Would the drone need to assess if the line is a suitable one before (or after) connecting? Also was a private power line used, or did the university ask the power company for permission before conducting their field tests?
- atenni 3y agoLooks like the tests were run on a private line belonging to an airport. From the associated PDF[0]: > “Testing was conducted at the outdoor three-phase powerline setup at HCA Airport in Odense, Denmark at the disposal of the authors…” [0]: https://findresearcher.sdu.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/256010085/ICRA2024_Autonomous_Overhead_Powerline_Recharging_for_Uninterrupted_Drone_Operations.pdf https://findresearcher.sdu.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/25601008...
- nhma 3y agoThe voltage of the powerline is not relevant since the charging principle is based on inductive coupling. So as long as you have a current above ~100A the harvester should work, irrespective of voltage. And high currents equal higher charging power. To optimize charging time, the drone could perhaps analyze the magnetic fields to determine which line has the highest current to optimize charging time. But I would assume some sort of balancing is happening between the lines and phases. The powerline used is a custom mockup with just 5V AC. But we have also landed on real powerlines. I think there's a video in the channel of the OP video.
- m463 3y agoYou can hold up fluorescent tubes under high voltage power lines and they will light up. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fluorescent+tubes+power+lines&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fluorescent+tubes+power+lines&iar=... I've always wondered why drones didn't just come with qi charger landing pads.
- Kerbonut 3y agoLet's take that a step farther and have the drone implement direct coupling and charge while flying near the power lines.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoGuessing a magnetic torque would be applied while flying that said drone would have to counter.
- Retric 3y ago> didn't just come with qi charger landing pads. Weight, qi chargers aren’t just an antenna they require power handling electronics. Getting the exact right DC voltage to charge a battery from two lightweight wires is just simpler internally.
- lolc 3y agoThis is the funniest thing I saw this week. The idea that such a teensy drone could travel continental distances by hanging like a bat and recharge between runs. Sure solar gliders may keep aloft indefinitely too. But this one steals its juice!
- palmfacehn 3y agohttps://www.pmel.noaa.gov/ocs/saildrone https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/ocs/saildrone >With a speed through the water of 2-8kts, they have a range of more than 16,000 nautical miles, and endurance of up to 12 months.
- ConanRus 3y ago[dead]
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- shahar2k 3y agoI imagine something like a weaponized version of this, loitering semi autonomous drone swarms fully charged / ready to deploy hanging off wires... a bit like the US spider munition or just smart landmines.
- cdchn 3y agoYou don't need them to loiter. You just launch them when you have a target. We've had that for a long time; its called a missile.
- hiddencost 3y agoYou should pay more attention to the war in Ukraine.
- krisoft 3y agoAnd we had loitering missiles for a long while too. They are a valid use case. > You just launch them when you have a target. That is the magic. You can launch a loitering munition when you don’t yet have a target but suspect there might be one. This is very often the case with surface to air missile systems. If they radiate you can use that as a guiding signal to hit them, so most of the time they don’t. You launch the loitering munition which either baits them into radiating or you use something else as bait. Either way you get them to radiate and then the loitering munition already in the air homes in on that signal and destroys the radar, or if it is smarter the personel. The reason you want these to be in the air before they radiate is to shorten the reaction time. That way you can capitalise even on short burst of activity. In the end you either destroyed the SAM or supressed them by scarring them into not to radiate. If this sounds scifi to you, these are weapons from the 80s. Already old news.
- cdchn 3y agoSaying "this would be good for power line inspection drones" is true, but think bigger. Imagine if you could operate a fleet of delivery, surveillance, _whatever_ drones, with an already in place, widely distributed charging infrastructure that costs you nothing to build (but you pay for usage). This is like in-flight refueling massively extending the operating range of jet aircraft.
- squarefoot 3y agoYou don't even need many drones for surveillance, just a few ones that deploy mini cameras using power lines both for power and communication. Cameras wouldn't need a battery to operate because they'd remain in place. No drive logic, no sensors, no motors, no batteries: much cheaper, just leave each one at regular distance and collect information remotely.
- cdchn 3y agoI should have probably left surveillance out because I was thinking less about panopticon style surveillance and more things like traffic patterns, crop growth, etc.
- squarefoot 3y agoIT could have also less malicious uses, like wildfire monitoring for example. A 360 degree thermal camera hanging from a line would allow immediate warnings about the surrounding area long before some human notices.
- permo-w 3y agosounds like a dystopian nightmare
- karaterobot 3y agoYou're only thinking of the near certainty that a ubiquitous surveillance state would lead to government corruption, mass incarceration, general anxiety, the disruption of norms, and the end of many civil liberties. Try to focus on the upside potential for a small number of investors!
- doikor 3y agoThat is going to be really hard (impossible?) to monitor for billing purposes. Basically would have to resort to self reporting/honor system.
- sspiff 3y agoOr good old fashioned theft.
- wanderingstan 3y agoAs others have pointed out, the energy consumed would literally be “too cheap to meter.” More realistic would be that, If fully realized, this becomes a great secondary income stream for the power line owners. Not only do they get to monitor their own lines with self-powering drones, but they rent out access to delivery drones, traffic monitoring drones, and (yes) whatever nefarious and helpful uses people dream up. Monitoring would not have to be perfect in order for them to still make huge profits. Seems more akin to how the railroad companies realized that could make a fortune by using their right-of-ways for communications cables. And for monitoring: seems like an obvious solution would be to have monitoring drones that watch for usage by other drones. :)
- scotty79 3y agoI hope Ukrainians are watching this. It would be a shame if even a single russian refinery remained out of their drones range.
- Muromec 3y agoThose are different kind of drones. To successfully enhance a refinery, it takes a smallish plane with a pot of explosives, not a tiny grenade-dropper or fpv.
- dontupvoteme 3y agoCan't wait for the failure mode where they sit over HVDC lines, fail because there's no alternating magnetic field, and then fall on them and hobble the infrastructure.
- nhma 3y agoThe gripper has several modes. There's a mode for charging the battery and providing holding force given AC powerline current, a mode for just holding the drone without charging given AC powerline current (if battery is full), and another mode where a small current (about 1W power) is taken from the battery and used to provide holding force in the case where there is no powerline current. Additionally, the gripper can be designed to fail open or fail closed, whichever is deemed appriate for the end-user.
- pockmockchock 3y agothis is nice, perfect for surveillance, like boarder control etc.
- jl6 3y agoI imagine that billing for the electricity usage will be the power company’s distant second concern behind the mechanical stress of hanging unauthorized devices off a cable that was not designed with this scenario in mind.
- wanderingstan 3y agoAs mentioned in another comment, these cables are designed to handle orders of magnitude more stress than a drone. (Think wind storms, entire flocks of birds, blown debris, etc) For example, See this video of how wires are inspected by humans crawling along them: https://youtu.be/oBJyyEAw-6g?si=QVqBgjqwlM4XCGKl https://youtu.be/oBJyyEAw-6g?si=QVqBgjqwlM4XCGKl
- schiffern 3y agoIf anything, this offers utility operators a massive new revenue opportunity. Drone fleets could pay to "perch" and recharge (giving unlimited range and ubiquitous charging), all just by reusing existing infrastructure. No need for a massive new infrastructure buildout, and "nothing left to take away" design. Big future for whoever can successfully commercialize this.
- nottorp 3y agoMassive? Comparing to carrying high currents around, not so sure charging drones for a few watts would even make sense for a company that runs those power lines. Of course they could create a sophisticated billing system, invest tens of millions in branding and marketing and then end up in the red for that particular operation.
- sans_souse 3y agoNow let's get powerlines in the roads for ∞ car charging en route
- hatenberg 3y agoUkraine will be taking note.
- pigpang 3y agoSuch drones are not practical in the war zone, because this introduces dependency on wires and electricity. In our air space it's no helpful. In enemy air space it's vulnerable to enemy action.
- 1970-01-01 3y agoThe pessimist in me says developing this tech into a standard would be handing terrorists a very quick and effective way to shear power lines.
- nottorp 3y ago"Terrorists" could just bolt a buzzsaw to a drone, drive a mile away from the power line in a truck with a few barrels of extra diesel and a generator and cut away until they get bored of it. But I see an opportunity for the security theater industry there...
- JKCalhoun 3y agoThey'll just shoot the power station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
- nottorp 3y agoFlying trolleybuses :) If you live near a power line, is it worth it to have a few drones automatically go back and forth and recharge your house batteries for free?
- questinthrow 3y ago[flagged]
- GTP 3y agoDon't tell your electricity company about this :D
- Roark66 3y agoVery cool, but I see one major problem with this. You need pretty large currents in these lines. They say above 100A. I'm not sure what are the usage patterns of such lines I'd be surprised if it wasn't substantially below 100A of current even on lower voltage lines. For example the lowest voltage that is used in my country (befoeits stepped down for consumers) is 10kV. This system would need 1MW of load to be useful. So let's say the line supplies a small community of 250 houses. Each house would need to be running a load of 4kW. How reliably can we predict such usage? So I think this is going to be limited to "perch" on large inter-City connections.
- jiveturkey 3y agoif it flies it spies
- peter_d_sherman 3y agohttps://www.comsol.com/paper/image/66162/big.png https://www.comsol.com/paper/image/66162/big.png From the following paper: "Electromagnetic Simulation of Split-Core Current Transformer for Medium Voltage Applications" by N. Paudel, V. Siddharth, S. Shaw and D. Raschka (2018) https://www.comsol.com/paper/electromagnetic-simulation-of-split-core-current-transformer-for-medium-voltage-66162 https://www.comsol.com/paper/electromagnetic-simulation-of-s... Related: Learn everything about the Split-Core Current Transformer: https://innovatorsguru.com/split-core-current-transformer https://innovatorsguru.com/split-core-current-transformer Video about Current Transformers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Vw40nUSwA&t=92s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Vw40nUSwA&t=92s