Innovative Design of Drone Landing Gear Used as a Receiving Coil in Wireless Charging Application

Tommaso Campi, Silvano Cruciani, Francesca Maradei and Mauro Feliziani
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Tommaso Campi: Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Silvano Cruciani: Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Francesca Maradei: Department of Astronautics, Electrical and Energetics Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Mauro Feliziani: Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 18, 1-20

Abstract: A near-field wireless power transfer (WPT) technology is applied to recharge the battery of a small size drone. The WPT technology is an extremely attractive solution to build an autonomous base station where the drone can land to wirelessly charge the battery without any human intervention. The innovative WPT design is based on the use of a mechanical part of the drone, i.e., landing gear, as a portion of the electrical circuit, i.e., onboard secondary coil. To this aim, the landing gear is made with an adequately shaped aluminum pipe that, after suitable modifications, performs both structural and electrical functions. The proposed innovative solution has a very small impact on the drone aerodynamics and the additional weight onboard the drone is very limited. Once the design of the secondary coil has been defined, the configuration of the WPT primary coil mounted in a ground base station is optimized to get a good electrical performance, i.e., high values of transferred power and efficiency. The WPT design guidelines of primary and secondary coils are given. Finally, a demonstrator of the WPT system for a lightweight drone is designed, built, and tested.

Keywords: magnetic resonant coupling; wireless power transfer (WPT); drone; unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); automatic battery recharging station; magnetic field (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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