mid-air refueling in 2015<\/a>, which bodes well for the future of plane-sized vehicles that run on traditional fuels. But what of electric engine drones?<\/p>\n\n\n\nQuadcopters, as ubiquitous as they are constrained by short flight times, are an ideal candidate for in-air recharging. Researchers at the High Performance Robotics Laboratory (HiPeRLab) at the University of California – Berkeley demonstrated an aerial recharging ability, one that almost doubled the flight time of the recharged drone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Batteries are both essential for electric drone flight and also the heaviest component of the vehicle, reaching a point where increasing battery size will diminish flight time. With recharging, a hovering drone can instead sustain longer flight, so long as it can continuously be resupplied by the fresh batteries of smaller feeder craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As with most experimental research, the use cases are all early extrapolations from proofs of concept. Fortunately for military planners and designers, a large component of what quadcopters do is hover, so anything that extends hover time could add value to a drone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With an average quadcopter flight time of around 20 minutes, troops have to be mindful of how to best use that limited window. If a patrol wants to place a scout over the corner of a building to catch potential movement, it has to hope that the drone sees what it needs to in that short flight time. With recharging, a drone could stay focused on a point for closer to 40 minutes, allowing more people to move into position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A flight time of 40 minutes is long for a drone and short for a sensor mast, but the option for a temporary sensor tower, flown into place and then sustained through a small fleet of resupply batteries, is likely just the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers, after all, just have to prove the concept. It\u2019s up to the designers to find a use and the engineers to iterate it into being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watch a video of the drones recharging below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n