6 ms·

The inductive charging hack is SO freaking awesome. I am going to have a base-station on my desk for it to land on and charge.

by cwilson 14y ago

spuz 14y ago
It's a great idea but that big stack of copper coils has got to weigh the copter down and likely reduce the fly time significantly.
- yk 14y ago
  But it can reload by itself, so flying time should be increased. ( It would be cool to build something that you can reload the drone in the air. Some kind of Tesla coil for example. :)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - Florin_Andrei 14y ago
    A quad copter actually requires a lot of energy to stay aloft. Folks who build regular quads, using 2000 ... 3500 mAh batteries, get something like 10 ... 15 min flight time. That's a lot of energy going down the wind. You might be able to juice it up in midair, but the field would have to be somehow focused on the quad, otherwise you'll never get the required power density.
    - yk 14y ago
      That would be something in the range of a 20 W at the drone. So something like a modified microwave oven should do it. ( The drone flies into the oven, recharges in flight, flies out when charged.) That has the additional advantage that no 200 W radio emitters are jamming all cell phones in the neighborhood.
      - Florin_Andrei 14y ago
        It's gonna be tough on the batteries. If you want any sort of decent battery life, the charge current must be pretty small - at least compared to the max discharge current.
- sylvinus 14y ago
  You could probably leave the copper coils on the ground somehow, which then I guess would be just like a power plug :)
- beambot 14y ago
  There are examples of wireless UAV recharging, even during flight, dating back to the 1960s [1]. MIT researchers have also built UAVs that perch on power lines for (eventual) recharging [2]. Apologies for the self-indulgent links -- I wrote the articles, so they were easy for me to locate. ;-) [1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/17/wireless-power-transfer-ground-sensors-using-uav-quadrotor http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/17/wireless-power-transfe... [2] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/07/20/gliding-uav-perches-powerline-recharge http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/07/20/gliding-uav-perches-po...
  - asynchronous13 14y ago
    What Brown did with wireless energy transfer back in the 60's is very impressive. But calling that contraption a helicopter is generous at best. Calling it a UAV is downright misleading. The side-view picture in your write up looks almost like a helicopter. Look at a different angle though: http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/images/models-in-industry-annual-edition-1969-aam-25.jpg http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/images/models-i...
    - beambot 14y ago
      The point was simply: it is possible to transfer meaningful amounts of power to an aerial platform to keep it aloft. LaserMotive still works in this space using directed laser light, funded (IIRC) by NASA. From a practical perspective, wireless power transfer (of pretty much every form) can have major drawbacks... but they're "rearranged" in the system to make 'em palatable. For example, the system as a whole may be incredibly lossy -- but that's predominantly at the ground station where you have ample access to power. Often, you're willing to accept 10% conversion efficiency when 100% of the converted power is useful to the target (think of RFID tags). In other cases, the benefits of near-field (short-range) inductive charging are (1) lack of wires and (2) more robust physical design (check out Sphero). TL;DR: there are circumstances where all these things make sense, but it's very application and system specific. As for your take on acronyms... UAV => Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Brown's contraption flew (albeit attached to guide wires for stability) without an occupant. What would you call it?

The inductive charging hack is SO freaking awesome. I am going to have a base-station on my desk for it to land on and charge.

by cwilson 14y ago

The inductive charging hack is SO freaking awesome. I am going to have a base-station on my desk for it to land on and charge.

spuz 14y ago

It's a great idea but that big stack of copper coils has got to weigh the copter down and likely reduce the fly time significantly.

yk 14y ago
But it can reload by itself, so flying time should be increased. ( It would be cool to build something that you can reload the drone in the air. Some kind of Tesla coil for example. :)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Florin_Andrei 14y ago
  A quad copter actually requires a lot of energy to stay aloft. Folks who build regular quads, using 2000 ... 3500 mAh batteries, get something like 10 ... 15 min flight time. That's a lot of energy going down the wind. You might be able to juice it up in midair, but the field would have to be somehow focused on the quad, otherwise you'll never get the required power density.
  - yk 14y ago
    That would be something in the range of a 20 W at the drone. So something like a modified microwave oven should do it. ( The drone flies into the oven, recharges in flight, flies out when charged.) That has the additional advantage that no 200 W radio emitters are jamming all cell phones in the neighborhood.
    - Florin_Andrei 14y ago
      It's gonna be tough on the batteries. If you want any sort of decent battery life, the charge current must be pretty small - at least compared to the max discharge current.
sylvinus 14y ago
You could probably leave the copper coils on the ground somehow, which then I guess would be just like a power plug :)
beambot 14y ago
There are examples of wireless UAV recharging, even during flight, dating back to the 1960s [1]. MIT researchers have also built UAVs that perch on power lines for (eventual) recharging [2]. Apologies for the self-indulgent links -- I wrote the articles, so they were easy for me to locate. ;-) [1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/17/wireless-power-transfer-ground-sensors-using-uav-quadrotor http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/17/wireless-power-transfe... [2] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/07/20/gliding-uav-perches-powerline-recharge http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/07/20/gliding-uav-perches-po...
- asynchronous13 14y ago
  What Brown did with wireless energy transfer back in the 60's is very impressive. But calling that contraption a helicopter is generous at best. Calling it a UAV is downright misleading. The side-view picture in your write up looks almost like a helicopter. Look at a different angle though: http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/images/models-in-industry-annual-edition-1969-aam-25.jpg http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/images/models-i...
  - beambot 14y ago
    The point was simply: it is possible to transfer meaningful amounts of power to an aerial platform to keep it aloft. LaserMotive still works in this space using directed laser light, funded (IIRC) by NASA. From a practical perspective, wireless power transfer (of pretty much every form) can have major drawbacks... but they're "rearranged" in the system to make 'em palatable. For example, the system as a whole may be incredibly lossy -- but that's predominantly at the ground station where you have ample access to power. Often, you're willing to accept 10% conversion efficiency when 100% of the converted power is useful to the target (think of RFID tags). In other cases, the benefits of near-field (short-range) inductive charging are (1) lack of wires and (2) more robust physical design (check out Sphero). TL;DR: there are circumstances where all these things make sense, but it's very application and system specific. As for your take on acronyms... UAV => Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Brown's contraption flew (albeit attached to guide wires for stability) without an occupant. What would you call it?