Electric Sky will explore adapting its wireless charging architecture to power a swarm of drones. (Source: U.S. Army CCDC Army Research Laboratory Illustration)

Start-up Uses Darpa Grant For Wireless Transmissible Power to Drones

Either Nicolas Tesla is rolling over in his grave or he is kicking up his heels over Whisper Beam. Tesla long held that electric power was transmissible without the use of power lines. Now it appears a company called Electric Sky has done just that.

We found an article this week on geekwire.com on Electric Sky. It also details the work of Seattle-based PowerLight Technologies, for instance, which is working on a laser-based system that could power up unpiloted aerial vehicles as well as 5G base stations. But Electric Sky’s proprietary technology takes a different approach.

“Whisper Beam technology is the electromagnetic equivalent of a whispering gallery,” Millman said in a news release. “In a whispering gallery a single listener across the room can hear the speaker but no one else can, not even people standing directly between the speaker and listener. The sound is too weak for them to hear.”

Whisper Beam’s signal starts out weaker and gets stronger as it nears its intended target which at this point is an electric drone. The radio waves sent out by Electric Sky’s transmitter self-focus at the receiver, enabling the drone to draw kilowatts of power in any kind of weather.

Electric Sky will use the six-month Phase I award, granted through DARPA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, to explore ways to adapt its wireless architecture to power a swarm of drones.

The other company geekwire.com mentioned from Seattle does their transmissible power a little differently. Powerlight Technologies also has huge investments, moving their product forward.

LaserMotive designs and builds systems to deliver wireless power via laser. This technology enables users to transmit electricity without wires for applications where wires are either cost-prohibitive or physically impractical.

LaserMotive transmits electric power with a unique technology that enables next-generation lifestyle convenience for consumers’ portable electronics and solves power delivery challenges for industrial customers in the power utility, commercial aircraft, telecom, unmanned aerial vehicle and other markets.

read more at geekwire.com