Hi guys,
In my quest to create a fully autonomous drone I got thinking "hey, what if it can CHARGE ITSELF?" This is the point where light bulbs turned on in my head and so on. With all these wireless charging mats for cellphones and such, there just has to be a way to create a docking station for a quad to fly to, sit there for a while for a full service recharge, then back off to its task at hand until its back for more of that delicious wireless juice.
I'd like to keep the cost low on this idea (of course), so I'm thinking it would be best not to create it from the ground up, but rather use what is available. The main problem I see here is what's available is chargers for cellphones, which run on single cell batteries. This just isn't enough voltage for my 4 cell quad. Anyone know of an inductive charging system that can charge 4 cell batteries? Or any other ideas for tackling this problem?
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When I was shopping for home appliances, I saw a little device for home cleaning, which sort of reminded me about your idea of a self-charging drone. Here it is, and you may want to take a closer look at their self-charging function available in every model in the lineup.
A few months ago i participated in a project where we created a "dronestation" prove of concept. An wireless charger (interoperable) for drones. We managed to get about 8W of power transfer at a distance of 2-4 cm.
Refer to http://dronestation.org/ for more. If anyone is interested to fund this research I'd be happy to put you in touch with the guys behind it.
Cheers.
this link no longer works http://dronestation.org/
Victor, what progress have you made? What sort of investment are you guys looking for?
Hi Euan,
Project ended with a successful proof of concept about the feasibility of a wireless and self-powered charging station for small VTOLs. These tests were followed up by a wired energy transmission station using metallic legs in the drone that conducted the energy (the landing pad/station was made out of a PCB containing hexagon-like copper planes that could interexchange polarity and allowed to charge the drone battery autonomously).
Funding for the project finished and we didn't pushed it forward. Write me at "victor at erlerobot.com" if you are willing to support this financially.
So let see if we can learn anything here and apply it.
I think I have seen a quad charging on a similar landing pad a while ago but lost the link.
Good luck.
Whats the point when it still takes much longer to charge than to drain ?
Thank you so much :)
I published a conference paper with it and you can purchase the paper from http://papers.sae.org/2012-01-2115/.
We developed the idea more and submitted as journal paper on last March and it is currently under review. I will reply again once the journal paper is published!
We finished some parts of your idea. Please check the following link out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm-LfTnsnCs
I am very interested in the idea of a home-dock that copter could take off and land on to charge.
You already identified voltage as an issue, I would probably add amperage to that. To fill up a 3Ah or 5Ah battery will take amperage or a long time.
The other very big problem I can see is that most copters (anything larger than a microcopter) run high-capacity high-discharge LiPo batteries. Those require very careful monitoring while charging or very slow charging (or KABOOM plasma fireball). You will probably need some kind of balancing and monitoring logic between the inductive charger and the LiPo plug that breaks out all the cell voltages (the low amperage one). I'm way out of my depth here, so.. let's hope there are some induction charging and LiPo experts around.
I will add a parting thought: As soon as we can build such a charging dock, I'm sticking a solar panel to it. Imagine a relay chain of charging pads in open areas with no grid connection (say adjacent to a pipeline). Solar charge all day, serve any drones that "drop" in.
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