[HN Gopher] Autonomous Overhead Powerline Recharging for Uninter...
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Autonomous Overhead Powerline Recharging for Uninterrupted Drone
Operations [video]
Author : DocFeind
Score : 48 points
Date : 2024-04-05 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Pretty cool, though my take is that if it's recharging just from
| induction it's essentially stealing the electricity... I suppose
| if the owners of the lines want to have autonomous drones monitor
| their status, that's not stealing, but if you wanted to release
| some little flying vampire drones of your own which could run
| indefinitely that way, someone might be less amused.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| I was trying to figure out exactly how it charges with just 1
| pole. It must be induction in that case, right?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| It could have a small spool of wire to drop to the ground to
| make contact. This would allow the drone to rest on the wire
| while charging.
| bdamm wrote:
| This would vaporize the drone, the wire, and anyone or
| anything nearby, sending flaming battery and electronics
| shrapnel in many directions. High tension does not mess
| around.
| pkage wrote:
| From the video description:
|
| > A passively actuated gripping mechanism grasps the
| powerline cable during landing after which a control circuit
| regulates the magnetic field inside a split-core current
| transformer to provide sufficient holding force as well as
| battery recharging.
| nealabq wrote:
| When the grippers close they probably close the loops of a
| coil that wraps around the wire. So it's harvesting the ever
| changing magnetic field that arises from AC current,
| independent of voltage. You can still get some power from
| coils that aren't wrapped around the wire but are still
| parallel. I think that's how wireless phone chargers work.
|
| You can also take power using a capacitor instead of an
| inductor, from the changing voltage (not current) in an AC
| line. Like when you hold a florescent tube vertical under a
| hi-power line, and it lights up.
| delichon wrote:
| This could become a major power draw over decades. It's
| probably time to figure out a protocol. E.g. a cheap light
| small low power meter on the drone that can post the
| transaction to the electric company while in flight, signals to
| designate power lines as in or out of the system and their
| current price, etc. Solar roof owners could compete with the
| utilities. There are unicorns hiding in this forest.
|
| The vampires will be the charging drones that aren't associated
| with a transaction. So it's about as enforceable as a
| requirement that drones have accurate identifier transponders.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Who cares? If they don't want their power drawn they need to
| be burying their powerlines anyway.
| j-bos wrote:
| Alternatively
|
| Who cares? If they don't want their oil siphoned they need
| to be burying their pipelines anyway.
|
| Most would agree that unauthorized draws from common
| infrastructure resulting in loss is theft.
| davely wrote:
| I feel like I would be more sympathetic to this argument
| if my utility provider wasn't PG&E.
| 1minusp wrote:
| Cost of undergrounding power lines is large. Especially
| over the distribution network (in that there is a lot more
| of it over space)
| sdenton4 wrote:
| On the other hand, hung lines have a tendency to fall
| down, get tangled in trees, and start forest fires, so
| the cost of above ground lines is also high...
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| If Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic taught me
| anything it's that underground power lines are for the
| capitalist bourgeoisie.
| tarikjn wrote:
| There probably are exemptions for emergency or defense
| applications.
| wglb wrote:
| If that can be measured, I would be pretty surprised.
|
| I would project that the drain from all possible drone charging
| is orders of magnitude less than the e.g. coronal loss or the
| static radiation that blasts my ham radio.
|
| Any legal action would need to be able to document that loss,
| one would think.
| Terr_ wrote:
| But you agree the loss exists, right? It's simply difficult
| to detect from some aggregate noisy flow at a centralized
| location, because the system was never designed to make that
| easily measurable.
|
| The amount could be estimated by looking at how much flying
| the drones do between charges, or by suing for access to
| charging/position telemetry of the units.
| _visgean wrote:
| right now the loss does not exist. Its a cool experiment.
| If this was a big thing the drone fleet operators would
| simply get some kind of legal agreement with the
| transmission operator. But overall we are talking about
| really small amounts of energy.
| PopePompus wrote:
| This video would probably suffice to document the loss,
| assuming the recharging was done without the utility's
| permission.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Prev. post / original publication:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39943807
| scoot wrote:
| There is no previous discussion.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Edited
| kernoble wrote:
| Reminds me of this video demonstrating this on the ground with a
| self wound inductor.
|
| I'm assuming the one on the drone is optimized for the
| voltage/freqency of that transmission line.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLS8pbDNHbk
| AI_beffr wrote:
| i had this idea in 2011
| ben_w wrote:
| Congrats to the team.
|
| Semi-seriously: Yet another item on the list of ideas I totally
| came up with on my own, honest, I just never did the hard work to
| make it real.
|
| (I know, I know, my ideas count for nothing when I don't turn
| them into reality. Actually making hardware means solving a lot
| more problems than my imagination provides, and who likes facing
| _those_ surprises in side-projects?)
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Yeah, this idea was pretty obvious -- both at LANL and JPL I
| worked in labs that were doing perching drones and we talked
| about landing on powerlines and charging inductively. The LANL
| work was 2013 and the JPL work was 2018. I think most "good
| ideas" are going to be thought of by thousands of people before
| they become a useful reality. Ideas per se really are pretty
| worthless and patents are only useful as a means of proxy
| warfare between large corporations, I'm afraid.
|
| Ever since I was a kid I've wanted to build a hanging chair
| something that latches onto powerlines and travels along them
| :-)
|
| Also reminds me of how I actually built a burrito delivery
| drone for fun that lowered a burrito on a winch a couple of
| years before the "tacocopter" story started doing the rounds on
| the news (early 2010s). It's interesting that drone delivery
| never made it beyond rural pharmaceuticals.
| pricechild wrote:
| Semi serious: was that enough to have patented the idea
| yourself?
| ben_w wrote:
| I believe you can get patents without a physical model?
|
| I wouldn't have bothered with a patent for something like
| this though. Probably is money in it now I think about it,
| but patents are just not the kind of thing I think much
| about.
| Havoc wrote:
| Would this have energy loss in the same way a phone wireless
| charger has? Or is this just leeching energy that would be lost
| anyway
| WJW wrote:
| No this definitely drains energy from the power line.
| pnjunction wrote:
| Wow! Is there any project which allows collaborative SLAM?
| OSM/Mapillary for commercial drones basically.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's going to be a very costly operation to go retrieve one of
| those once it's "gripper" ultimately fails. That's hoping it
| fails closed instead of failing open. Getting these parked in the
| face of upcoming weather is not going to be particularly fun,
| either.
|
| Given that you need a solid alternate location anyways, why not
| just go there instead? Then we can build safe single function
| autonomous ground charging stations that a human being can just
| walk up to and service on foot.
|
| Too clever by half.
| numbsafari wrote:
| I mean... who's to say you aren't operating these for nefarious
| purposes and the last thing you want to do is have them go back
| to a central location? Or if they are part of a defensive
| perimeter, or a long haul operation, where centralized service
| is problematic? These could be used for power line
| infrastructure observation and possibly even repairs at some
| point.
| bdamm wrote:
| This opens up all kinds of legal issues. The military
| applications could be very interesting as well.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| I can't imagine power companies would be ok with this. People go
| to jail for tapping into power lines. Energy theft from power
| lines is illegal.
|
| Even if this was somehow allowed by power companies, I wonder if
| they would be any weight considerations if multiple drones hooked
| on to the same line span.
|
| I see applications for this, but anyone operating these drones
| would need clearance from the power company they are tapping
| into.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I can't imagine power companies would be ok with this.
| People go to jail for tapping into power lines."_
|
| Presumably it's the power companies (specifically, transmission
| network and distribution network operators) who will be most
| interested in this. They're increasingly using drones for
| infrastructure inspection, finding faults, etc.
| underlogic wrote:
| For affordable long range assassination operations. Make it in
| clear matte plastic, quiet, low flying, add some obstacle
| avoidance and facial recognition perhaps. Quite a nasty package
| under 1500 dollars I bet. Could even be ultra small w poison
| darts too.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I presume the current transformer is spec'd for a particular
| range of current/voltage. Would the drone need to assess if the
| line is a suitable one before (or after) connecting?
|
| Also was a private power line used, or did the university ask the
| power company for permission before conducting their field tests?
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(page generated 2024-04-05 23:00 UTC)