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269

China’s ‘land aircraft carrier’ charges flying drone with microwave beam (www.scmp.com)

submitted 1 day ago by FTonsilStones@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Scientists in China have demonstrated a wireless power transmission system that uses a ground-based microwave emitter to beam energy to an antenna array mounted on the aircraft’s underside. Importantly, they were able to do this while both the drone and charging system were in motion.

In tests, the car-mounted system kept fixed-wing drones in the air for up to 3.1 hours at an altitude of 15 metres (49 feet). The key challenge that the team overcame was maintaining alignment between the emitter and the drone during flight, wrote Song Liwei, the project’s leader.

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[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 1 points 8 hours ago

Considering everybody talking about using these things in war it has the benefit of not being a suicide beacon visible to instruments for many many miles, unlike the microwave transmitters everybody else here want to carry with them

Also see;

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/09/powering-drones-with-ultra-thin-flexible-perovskite-pv-cells/

If you actually want to extend the lifetime of high performance autonomous drones in the field then it's more practical to do battery swaps