Autonomous recharge of drones through an induction based power transfer system

Abstract

Drones like helicopters use vertical oriented rotors to lift and navigate forward. Thanks to the use of modern flight controllers, they often can fly autonomously. Namely, the user can mark target points on a map to which the helicopter is driven by the software controller without any other interventions of the user. Once on the target, the helicopter performs the intended task, such as landing, catching aerial photos, or releasing loads. But, in order to be fully autonomous the helicopters should be also capable of recharging the on board batteries, as it is required to complete long lasting missions, without requiring any external interventions. A helicopter equipped with a suitable hardware that allows autonomous recharge by simply landing on a given platform is presented. The front-end of the on-board recharging circuit is capable of linking the time varying induction flow, produced by a circuit integrated in the landing platform, and converting the power associated to the magnetic field from AC to DC in order to recharge the helicopter battery.