Quadcopter drones are at a dead end because of short battery life, right? Well they could have been, were it not for scientists at Berkeley’s HiPeRLaB. Karan P Jain and Mark W Mueller may have agreed with you once. But that’s before they asked themselves why not have swappable drone batteries exchanging in the air.
Well Why Not Swappable Drone Batteries? Let’s Think Laterally
IEEE Spectrum seems to think this is a reasonable idea on paper. That’s because batteries make up a third of a drone’s weight which is hugely inefficient. If a drone has to break away to return to base for a replacement battery, what’s the point of it? That’s especially true if it was observing a critical event somewhere where human eyes can’t go.
Researchers Jain and Mueller have come up with a counter-proposal. Why not, they say bring the replacement battery to the drone by fitting it with rotors so it can fly? Sure, you will need fancy footwork when exchanging swappable drone batteries in the air. However, if we can land spacecraft on asteroids, surely we can make that happen too.
However, the Prototype May Not Be as Exciting As You Expect
The Jain-Muller prototype drone has two power sources. The primary one is its own battery it uses while exchanging temporary batteries. The auxiliary one is the regular arrival of flying batteries. Crude maybe, but the prototype now flies for an hour compared to the original twelve minutes.
The Berkeley demo takes place in a carefully controlled environment. More research is therefore needed to demonstrate the practicality of exchanging auxiliary drone batteries under real-life conditions. We are inclined to agree with IEEE Spectrum using two overlapping drones might achieve the same results.
That said, we did rather enjoy watching the video. Perhaps this is a case of solution shopping around for a problem. We have no doubt someone somewhere will stumble over one.
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Preview Image: Schematic of the Battery Switching Circuit
Video Share Link: https://youtu.be/P6XvhTe1Rdo
