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Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

ycombinator.com

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Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#111

Post by BobaFloutist »

vhcr wrote: post #79
DrewADesign wrote: post #70

Earlier 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!

The idea would be to use autonomous drones, so they wouldn't need to communicate, the problem would be that the GPS signal is jammed.

If they're not communicating, how are they sending back lots of data?

Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#112

Post by PieTime »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #111
vhcr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea would be to use autonomous drones, so they wouldn't need to communicate, the problem would be that the GPS signal is jammed.

If they're not communicating, how are they sending back lots of data?

I presume these are surveillance drones and are programmed to loop back to origin

Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#114

Post by toss1 »

ikidd wrote: post #95
sowbug wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's some calculations on the return [0] (usual caveats of stuff found on the internet). Quite low returns indeed!

[0] https://user.physics.unc.edu/~deardorf/phys25/rwp/exam1rwpso...

Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#115

Post by DrewADesign »

PieTime wrote: post #112
BobaFloutist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're not communicating, how are they sending back lots of data?

I presume these are surveillance drones and are programmed to loop back to origin

Surveillance gathered by an completely autonomous drone with no outside data, stationed far enough away to require refueling, close enough to enemy operations to be useful, that then needs to make its way back to origin, intact, through hostile territory, quickly enough for the gathered information to be useful, seems like a preeeetty big lift. Something a startup would promise to tackle with a star team of technologists over the course of like 10 years? Sure. Something they’d have designed within the past, like, year while getting shot at? I’d have to see that believe it.

Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#116

Post by lkbm »

ceejayoz wrote: post #5
lkbm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assume otherwise you have to have a way for the drones to meter their usage and pay the power company. It will likely make power theft easier, but it seems entirely viable to have an account with the power company where you report "I drew X joules from line Y" and for them to bill appropriately.

That seems entirely unviable to me. Have you met… people? “Trust me, bro!” is something I wish my power company would do, but they installed a meter instead.

I mean, if I have to pay them by how much power I draw, I'm pretty glad they have a way to measure that, because I don't.

What's there alternative in this case? If I can land a drone on the power line and suck up some power, they can either charge me when I tell them I did it, or they can not charge me.

Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#117

Post by DrewADesign »

650REDHAIR wrote: post #102
DrewADesign wrote: post #70

Earlier 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!

New attack models are using shielded electronics that don't need GPS and are immune to traditional jamming. Relying on computer vision and old school navigation math. Go ~X speed for Y distance(+/-) on Z heading until you reach A landmark and then start a new set of instructions.

I’m interested in reading up on that. Where did you see it?

Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#118

Post by danielheath »

stavros wrote: post #34
TomatoCo wrote: post #14

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.

No, but if there were something convenient for them to grab and hang from, like a power transmission line…

Re: Drones that recharge directly on transmission lines

#120

Post by nhma »

anfractuosity wrote: post #28

Remember seeing this a little while ago too - https://www.fastcompany.com/91089861/this-genius-vampire-dro... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-uekD6VTIQ has a video of their drone on a power line.

The prototype in the linked video was first tested back in 2023, and since then a few startups have set their sights on the technology (e.g. Nomadic Drones and Voltair). When working on the linked prototype we ran into some fundamental issues. Firstly, the recharging will only work with AC lines, and there's currently a lot of hype around UHVDC lines which are not compatible. Secondly, the AC lines must carry substantial current (ideally thousands of amps) for the recharging to not take forever. You can of course carry a much larger transformer on the drone to compensate, but this will in turn severely limit your flight time (ours was 1kg on a drone of 4.5kg and we could charge with 50W from 300A line current). You also have to account for significant daily fluctuations in the line current. It'll be interesting to see how the tech evolves, and I'll definitely be following these startups closely.
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