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Is it harvesting energy from the magnetic field (via induction), or does it extracts its energy from the electric field instead?
And does the drone just happen to land on the power line for saving energy while doing so, or is the contact necessary somehow?
I'm surprised this isn't already happening in Ukraine. They could fly small surveillance drones deep in enemy territory, perch on a power line, and send back lots of data. Not just video, but also sound and triangulating signals. This would also be useful in fog by monitoring major roads where high altitude drones and satellites would be obstructed.
There has been lots of work to make fibre connected drones, so that they can't be located as easily (also the pilot)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll definitely charge faster, if only because it's drawing less power to stay up and getting closer. The only question is, is it like 10% or 100% faster?
Drones consume something like 100W to stay in the air (ballpark, of course), so they'd probably never charge if they had to hover.
If this works via induction could you even eliminate the need for the drones to land? Assuming flight conditions are good, there would be a region around the wire (line of charge) with an electric/magnetic field that the drones could use, any shielding notwithstanding.
iirc efficiency loss in wireless energy transmission is exponential? someone correct me. But basically after just a few mm the losses are so great that the amount of electricity needed becomes ridiculously wasteful. to power a running drone at more than a few inches would be just...a lot.
Maybe this is silly to complain about, but how would power companies charge these drone companies for electricity consumption? Seems… just so easy to steal?
Huh, is that legal? I mean I guess it is when the power company is the customer, as they talk about, but otherwise?
As long as they can cover the liability when inevitably one of this sets off a wildfire in California that costs Billions. (I think it’s a cool idea if done right, they are after all trying to fix the problem of wildfires anyway which makes me hopeful)
I mean, they'd also fix fire detection as well.
2. Find more fires
3. Profit
Like any good startup.
I'm surprised this isn't already happening in Ukraine. They could fly small surveillance drones deep in enemy territory, perch on a power line, and send back lots of data. Not just video, but also sound and triangulating signals. This would also be useful in fog by monitoring major roads where high altitude drones and satellites would be obstructed.
I'm not like a drone-i-ologist or nothin, but from what I gather, both sides have gotten really good at detecting and jamming drone communication in the Ukraine/Russia conflict, which would probably make that a tough use case. I've read that the newer attack drones are controlled by a reaaallly long, reaaalllyy thin fiber optic line!
Do the drones need transformers? Won't those be heavy?
Don't the drones need a way to circulate the electricity? IE have a path to ground?