Dr Sam Aldhaher of the Imperial College London has produced a video showing a quadrotor drone being flown completely using wireless power via magnetic induction.
The quadrotor’s battery has been removed and the transmitter was implemented on a two layer PCB and driven by a load independent Class EF inverter.
The inverter operates at 13.56 MHz and uses a single GaN transistor from GaN Systems.
The receiving coil consists a single turn of copper tape which was wound around the shield of the quadrotor. The receiver board consists of a Class D rectifier and a DC/DC converter.
The drone of course can’t fly very far but the hope is that continued advancement in wireless power technology will increase the distance that machines can operate away from their power source.
