Light-weight wireless power transfer for mid-air charging of drones

Aldhaher, Samer; Mitcheson, Paul D.; Arteaga, Juan M.; Kkelis, George; Yates, David C.

doi:10.23919/eucap.2017.7928799

Cited by 94 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Another critical aspect is the misalignment of the WPT coils due to an imprecise landing of the drone that can lead to a reduction of the coupling factor between coils, and therefore of the electrical performance. These two aspects have been investigated in the recent past, and several solutions have been presented [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. All the proposed solutions were mainly derived by previous WPT applications in other fields such as automotive or consumer electronics, and the main focus was on adapting these techniques to drones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In [14], a miniaturized receiving coil is placed on the landing leg of a drone, and an array of primary coils is adopted to improve the performances of the system. A charging system based on radio frequency (RF) transmission is presented in [18] and [22], while the capacitive WPT system is adopted in [19]. The main disadvantages of the RF system is the compliance with electromagnetic compatibility (EMC)/electromagnetic interference (EMI) regulations, while the maximum output power and the low efficiency is the main limitation of capacitive technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Innovative Design of Drone Landing Gear Used as a Receiving Coil in Wireless Charging Application

et al. 2019

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A near-field wireless power transfer (WPT) technology is applied to recharge the battery of a small size drone. The WPT technology is an extremely attractive solution to build an autonomous base station where the drone can land to wirelessly charge the battery without any human intervention. The innovative WPT design is based on the use of a mechanical part of the drone, i.e., landing gear, as a portion of the electrical circuit, i.e., onboard secondary coil. To this aim, the landing gear is made with an adequately shaped aluminum pipe that, after suitable modifications, performs both structural and electrical functions. The proposed innovative solution has a very small impact on the drone aerodynamics and the additional weight onboard the drone is very limited. Once the design of the secondary coil has been defined, the configuration of the WPT primary coil mounted in a ground base station is optimized to get a good electrical performance, i.e., high values of transferred power and efficiency. The WPT design guidelines of primary and secondary coils are given. Finally, a demonstrator of the WPT system for a lightweight drone is designed, built, and tested.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovative Design of Drone Landing Gear Used as a Receiving Coil in Wireless Charging Application

et al. 2019

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“…Focusing on the recharging solution to extend individual platform flight time and a multiagent scheme for constant operation, impressive operation times have been demonstrated (Valenti, Dale, How, de Farias, & Vian, : 24 hr single‐vehicle experiment) and (Mulgaonkar & Kumar, : 9.5 hr with multiple vehicles). Recharging methods vary from wireless charging (Aldhaher, Mitcheson, Arteaga, Kkelis, & Yates, ) to contact‐based charging pads (Mulgaonkar & Kumar, ) to battery swap systems (Toksoz et al, ; Suzuki, Filho, & Morrison, ). While wireless charging offers the most flexibility since no physical contact has to be made, charging currents are low resulting in excessively long charging times and are hence not an option for quick redeployment.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long‐duration fully autonomous operation of rotorcraft unmanned aerial systems for remote‐sensing data acquisition

Malyuta

Brommer

Hentzen

et al. 2019

Journal of Field Robotics

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Recent applications of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to precision agriculture have shown increased ease and efficiency in data collection at precise remote locations. However, further enhancement of the field requires operation over long periods of time, for example, days or weeks. This has so far been impractical due to the limited flight times of such platforms and the requirement of humans in the loop for operation. To overcome these limitations, we propose a fully autonomous rotorcraft UAS that is capable of performing repeated flights for long‐term observation missions without any human intervention. We address two key technologies that are critical for such a system: full platform autonomy to enable mission execution independently from human operators and the ability of vision‐based precision landing on a recharging station for automated energy replenishment. High‐level autonomous decision making is implemented as a hierarchy of master and slave state machines. Vision‐based precision landing is enabled by estimating the landing pad's pose using a bundle of AprilTag fiducials configured for detection from a wide range of altitudes. We provide an extensive evaluation of the landing pad pose estimation accuracy as a function of the bundle's geometry. The functionality of the complete system is demonstrated through two indoor experiments with duration of 11 and 10.6 hr, and one outdoor experiment with a duration of 4 hr. The UAS executed 16, 48, and 22 flights, respectively, during these experiments. In the outdoor experiment, the ratio between flying to collect data and charging was 1–10, which is similar to past work in this domain. All flights were fully autonomous with no human in the loop. To our best knowledge, this is the first research publication about the long‐term outdoor operation of a quadrotor system with no human interaction.

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“…[2]: 9.5 h with multiple vehicles). Recharging methods vary from wireless charging [3] to contact-based charging pads [2] to battery swap systems [4] [5]. While wireless charging offers the most flexibility since no physical contact has to be made, charging currents are low resulting in excessively long charging times and are hence not an option for quick redeployment.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-Duration Autonomy for Small Rotorcraft UAS Including Recharging

Brommer

Malyuta

Hentzen

2018

2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

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Many unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance and monitoring applications require observations at precise locations over long periods of time, ideally days or weeks at a time (e.g. ecosystem monitoring), which has been impractical due to limited endurance and the requirement of humans in the loop for operation. To overcome these limitations, we propose a fully autonomous small rotorcraft UAS that is capable of performing repeated sorties for long-term observation missions without any human intervention. We address two key technologies that are critical for such a system: full platform autonomy including emergency response to enable mission execution independently from human operators, and the ability of vision-based precision landing on a recharging station for automated energy replenishment. Experimental results of up to 11 hours of fully autonomous operation in indoor and outdoor environments illustrate the capability of our system.

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Light-weight wireless power transfer for mid-air charging of drones

Cited by 94 publications

References 9 publications

Innovative Design of Drone Landing Gear Used as a Receiving Coil in Wireless Charging Application

Innovative Design of Drone Landing Gear Used as a Receiving Coil in Wireless Charging Application

Long‐duration fully autonomous operation of rotorcraft unmanned aerial systems for remote‐sensing data acquisition

Long-Duration Autonomy for Small Rotorcraft UAS Including Recharging

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