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Wireless Power Transfer Technology for Drones

Project Description

Drones are used in a variety of applications such as surveillance, agriculture, inspection of power lines, aerial mapping, and courier services. They are powered by batteries that generally have a low battery capacity. These batteries require frequent charging which means the drone needs to make a return flight to a base station to physically connect the battery to power. As a result, the range of operation of these vehicles as well as their flight time is limited. Wireless charging provides a smart, convenient, and time efficient solution that can increase a drone’s functionality. Inductive Power Transfer (IPT) is the most commonly used technology for wireless power transfer in drones. Fig. 1 shows a rectangular double helix receiver coil proposed by Uvir Gordhan, a postgraduate student at UCT. The proposed coils can be easily fitted into the two of the T-Shaped Landing gear and demonstrate superior performance compared to the existing solenoid coils.

uvir concepy

Fig. 1

Papers

Paper 1
Paper 2

Current Investigators

Uvir

Uvir Gordhan

Gianluca Patrizi

sampathj