Drones

In-flight charging gives drones unlimited autonomous range

GET's in-flight charging stations could give industrial drones unlimited flight time – they just need to stop inside this induction loop for a few minutes to top up their batteries
GET
GET's in-flight charging stations could give industrial drones unlimited flight time – they just need to stop inside this induction loop for a few minutes to top up their batteries
GET

Global Energy Transmission (GET) has pioneered a mid-air inductive recharging system that can charge up several drones at once without requiring them to land. Build enough of these stations, and you can have an army of drones in the air that never need to land.

While companies like BShark explore alternative fuel sources like hydrogen to deliver long-endurance drone flight, GET is concentrating on topping up batteries mid-air.

The GET system appears simple enough: a hexagonal frame of wires on poles roughly 10 m (32 ft) in diameter that looks like a partially constructed gazebo frame. But when an appropriately set up drone flies into it, this frame can transmit up to 12 kilowatts of power at efficiencies around 80 percent – enough to give about 25 minutes' worth of endurance from a six-minute stop.

Multiple drones can charge inside the perimeter together if necessary, and the system is reasonably portable, so it can be set up and moved as required.

GET's vision for long-range autonomous drone missions is to have these charging loops set up several miles from one another, allowing a drone – or a number of drones – to constantly surveil an area, stopping to quickly recharge without needing a human to change a battery, and flying off to the next stop once the battery's full.

Autonomous drone armies that never sleep. What could possibly go wrong?

The system is demonstrated in the video below.

Source: GET

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6 comments
Rehab
So well charging you are consuming 25% of your stored energy, why not just land and charge 25% faster?
alan c
No evidence! No indication of charge power received at the drone, or charge power transmitted, which would give us an indication of the reality and of the efficiency of transmission. Six minutes of the "25 flight minute charge" is wasted hovering! And a six minute full charge is 10C, a very high rate for lithium batteries which will shorten their life. Why not just land and contact charge? This can be done without human involvement at the charge site.
McDesign
Any chance of hanging out by high-tension transmission lines to pick up power? Like . . . birds!
Don Duncan
Why not beam the charge directly to the drone from the ground?
Douglas Bennett Rogers
A cheap drone can now fly point to point.
amazed W1
What happened to all those worries about the effects of electromagnetic fields on humans? Wewere told that the fluorescent light fitting inthe kitchen was leading us to an early and cancerous death, and the levels of e.m.fs. developed by jogging throughthe earths magnetic field were almost as dangerous. No wonder folks are sceptical about CO2 and CH4 concentrations being the sole cause of global warming rather than showing an interesting correlation, with causation either way not certain..