This will open a giant can of worms. Hobbyists, bad actors and military will be taking advantage.
This is built especially with the military thought as the primary client.
Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
91–100 of 149 posts
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#92Maybe this is silly to complain about, but how would power companies charge these drone companies for electricity consumption? Seems… just so easy to steal?
When I was a kid, we had a neighbor who had somehow wrapped some wire around the power lines enough times to siphon off an interesting amount of power. I never saw the wire myself, so it might not have actually happened. But people certainly talked about doing it way back when.
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
as soon as it sends RF it'll be located and destroyed. There has been lots of work to make fibre connected drones, so that they can't be located as easily (also the pilot)
There's also powerline communication that these drones could use, relaying a signal to a second drone perched back in friendly territory. And if the military is going around blowing up all of their power transmission lines, that's also going to hurt them.
How many intact and tactically relevant cross border transmission lines between Ukraine and Russia can there be?
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#94Hopefully all of the perfect engineering candidates who previously worked in this specific space (autonomous line inspection at an industrial scale) live in San Francisco……………
Seems odd that this would be all in-person roles. Not the most apparent path to relevant talent.
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#95Maybe this is silly to complain about, but how would power companies charge these drone companies for electricity consumption? Seems… just so easy to steal?
When I was a kid, we had a neighbor who had somehow wrapped some wire around the power lines enough times to siphon off an interesting amount of power. I never saw the wire myself, so it might not have actually happened. But people certainly talked about doing it way back when.
We had a neighbor that put loops of wire under a 600kV line and got enough power to run a water pump for cows. The square law makes that kind of thing pretty low-return.
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#96Can anyone more knowledgeable explain how this works? 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?
Balisor[1] usually uses capacitive coupling, but it require a long parallel cable.
Some lamps do use induction, like this one[2].
I guess it uses induction looking at the drone, it also works with an open coil.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balisor
[2]: https://www.delta-box.com/en/marking/bht-marking-light-for-h...
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#97Anyone tried solar powered drones with charge weeks hiding on roofs between travel hops?
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#98I'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.
as soon as it sends RF it'll be located and destroyed. There has been lots of work to make fibre connected drones, so that they can't be located as easily (also the pilot)
I wonder if the power line could be damaged if they dry to take out the drone?
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
Those fiber optic lines only work 50-60% of the time. Often the drones are carried 20km on foot into position which sucks as you know half the equipment on your back won't work.
How do they not work? Just fail in transmitting data completely? Do you have a link to learn more about this?
Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also powerline communication that these drones could use, relaying a signal to a second drone perched back in friendly territory. And if the military is going around blowing up all of their power transmission lines, that's also going to hurt them.
How many intact and tactically relevant cross border transmission lines between Ukraine and Russia can there be?
Use the transmission lines to link up with an RF node to hand off. Friendly territory might just be some place without good Russian internal security coverage (perhaps deeper in Russia rather than towards the front lines if the node uses satcom).
A friend of mine worked on a covert comms system for the Rangers to use in the Battle For Berlin that thankfully never occurred. The idea was to clamp onto plumbing, fences, and similar infrastructure where possible. Nodes with radios handed off to other comms systems. It worked reasonably well in tests but I don't know that it went anywhere, point is that the theory is sound.