Scientists in China have demonstrated a wireless power transmission system that uses a ground-based microwave emitter to beam energy to an antenna array mounted on the aircraft’s underside. Importantly, they were able to do this while both the drone and charging system were in motion.
In tests, the car-mounted system kept fixed-wing drones in the air for up to 3.1 hours at an altitude of 15 metres (49 feet). The key challenge that the team overcame was maintaining alignment between the emitter and the drone during flight, wrote Song Liwei, the project’s leader.
Many comments are about how impractical/useless is this technology TODAY considering easier alternatives… but I see research exploring recharging electric flight devices in flight, which sounds as cool as powerful to have flight devices with larger services and ranges
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I think the biggest problem is that this way you have a beacon to your flying device and your recharging station, it would not be that difficult to build a bomb/missile that follow the trace to the ground station
I think that the “recharging” will always be a vulnerable stage and that the objective is to do that puntually and not a continuous dependence on power supply, but still seems safer and easier to abort than the one done currently with non electric planes, and for defense patrolling you will have more important infrastructures that would be targeted first, I still see only advantages if mature enough
I think that the “recharging” will always be a vulnerable stage and that the objective is to do that puntually and not a continuous dependence on power supply,
For an electric recharge I think you need a decent size infrastucture that you cannot move that much or easily. I don’t think that you can do with a enourmous power bank mounted on a truck.
but still seems safer and easier to abort than the one done currently with non electric planes,
Except that you can refuel a normal plane with just a couple of trucks and a strip of road long enough (Sweden built the Viggen around this principle and even the US has the highway designed to work as temporary airfield by some old law).
While it is easy to hit an airport, it became a lot harder to take out all the roads (in part because you will later need them)and for defense patrolling you will have more important infrastructures that would be targeted first, I still see only advantages if mature enough
Yes, the charging station. Once I take out it, you electric planes are out of order. No more patrolling.
I asume this technology when mature enough will not be surrounded by a single point failure. Allowing electric recharge of flying devices, that already have some battery autonomy, without having to land and take off, is clearly more efficient and less vulnerable. Plus mobile electric rechargers, battery deposits and infrastructure will have the same weaknesses than fuel ones (except electric ones would may blow up a bit less under fire)
I asume this technology when mature enough will not be surrounded by a single point failure.
Up to a point, probably yes.
Allowing electric recharge of flying devices, that already have some battery autonomy, without having to land and take off, is clearly more efficient and less vulnerable.
Maybe is more efficient, but not less vulnerable. To recharge a flying device this way you basically mark the charging station even if you try to hide it, an attack could be carried against the station. Additionally having the drone or plane flying near it give away your position even if you come up with a mobile charging station (you cannot recharge too much far away, physic still stand). Then there is the problem of how much time you need to recharge it to a decent level, I am afraid that it would be in the hours range, and the necessity to keep the alignement, they had this problem also during the test, I suppose in a combat situation it would be way harder and this specific problem will not go away as the tech mature.
On the other hand, to keep the J37 Viggen example, it can be rearmed and refueled in 10 minutes and just need about 500 meters to take off. In this case if you don’t see where the plane land, you also need the time to find it, it not give away its position during the operation with a microwave beacon.
Plus mobile electric rechargers, battery deposits and infrastructure will have the same weaknesses than fuel ones (except electric ones would may blow up a bit less under fire)
Once a battery is damaged, it make no difference that it blow up or not, it is useless. And generally a battery fire is harder to put out.
But it would be interesting to see how it eveolve and if it became mature enough to be used in a real combat situation.
I have the feeling that current refueling in flight procedures are clearly more vulnerable than this approach that do not require physical coupling, for whatever these are useful (increasing operation autonomy, etc) the same for having to land in air carriers to extend patrolling times, this electric alternative seem safer in both scenarios, and at least with no more weak points than the fuel alternatives.
If is necessary to reload ammo no refueling-in-flight technology applies of course.
And if something blow up the damage radio clearly propagate immediately further than a battery fire, though regaring the situation a persistent fire can become also problematic, but these battery issues are still experiencing improvements, same happened with fuel counterparts (self sealing deposits, etc).
If this technology matures also recharging times will drop, we are seeing huge advances in plugged batteries.
I still see many advantages to the concept.
I have the feeling that current refueling in flight procedures are clearly more vulnerable than this approach that do not require physical coupling, for whatever these are useful (increasing operation autonomy, etc) the same for having to land in air carriers to extend patrolling times, this electric alternative seem safer in both scenarios, and at least with no more weak points than the fuel alternatives.
I think they are equally vulnerable, only in different ways.
And if something blow up the damage radio clearly propagate immediately further than a battery fire, though regaring the situation a persistent fire can become also problematic, but these battery issues are still experiencing improvements, same happened with fuel counterparts (self sealing deposits, etc).
My point earlier: while it is true that fuel explode and the damage propagate faster, it is easier to replace a tank (trucks) than a battery that can be made useless just damaging it, no need to destroy it.
If this technology matures also recharging times will drop, we are seeing huge advances in plugged batteries.
Up to a point yes, but it has physical limits (not unlike fuel refuelling, only diverse)
I still see many advantages to the concept.
It can. It need to be seen if it is scale well enough to be used on more than a test in a real life situation.
Holy shit.
Getting the ability to remote charge things via microwave… that are moving?
That’s been basically sci fi nonsense, at a practical level, for a long time.
Anybody remember the Microwave Power stations in SimCity 2000?
If you could actually get this tech working, it has an incredible number of potential applications.
I remember arguing with a mate in school about the damage a misaligned beam would cause to a city. I think the prevailing theory was a lot of cooked people without much structural damage.
Except that theory has no basis in reality.
Microwave ovens work by concentrating that energy into a very small space.
When is the last time you were cooked by radio waves?
Microwaves ARE radio waves.
Are you somehow entirely unaware of the DEW crowd control devices that have been being used for like 2 decades now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
Yeah, the whole point of these things is they basically microwave the outer layer of your skin, when in wide beam mode.
Or, they can be dialed in to be a more concentrated beam… to uh, internally heat up a bit more than just your skin.
But uh, for legal reasons of course nooo they do not do that and cannot do that.
While it is claimed not to cause burns under “ordinary use”,[50][51] it is also described as being similar to that of an incandescent light bulb being pressed against the skin,[14] which can cause severe burns in just a few seconds. The beam can be focused up to 700 meters away, and is said to penetrate thick clothing although not walls.[52] At 95 GHz, the frequency is much higher than the 2.45 GHz of a microwave oven. This frequency was chosen because it penetrates less than 1⁄64 of an inch (0.40 mm),[53] which – in most humans, except for eyelids and the thinner skin of babies – avoids the second skin layer (the dermis) where critical structures are found such as nerve endings and blood vessels.
I would imagine that if you had an emorous amount of microwave energy from an orbiting solar array, being beamed to a recieving station on earth, (ie, a very small small space compared to the distance involved) and it uh, missed, yeah, yeah it would microwave people.
There’s also this:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8733248/
Brief but intense pulses of radiofrequency (RF) energy can elicit auditory sensations when absorbed in the head of an individual, an effect known as the microwave auditory or “Frey effect” after the first investigator to examine the phenomenon (1). The effect is known to arise from thermoacoustically (TA)-induced acoustic waves in the head (2).
Lin has proposed that the Frey effect may be linked to unexplained health problems reported by U.S. officers in Cuba and elsewhere, the so-called Havana syndrome (3).
Probably don’t tell any schizophrenics you may or may not know about that.
I was in primary school. My understanding of physics was that water is wet not what it was made of.
Yeah, xrays are also radio waves. That doesn’t make them inherently less dangerous. Plenty of people have made mistakes around ground and ship based radar systems too and have accidentally cooked their insides. Just because 5G conspiracy theorists took over that argument doesn’t mean it has no basis in reality.
That makes no sense. It’s the wrong frequency to cook anything.
JFC…is US STEM education really this bad? Lemmy seems to struggle between STEM and Star Trek.
It’s the wrong frequency to cook anything.
The idea that microwave ovens use some specific frequency that’s good for cooking is a myth.
Dielectric heating occurs over a very broad range of frequencies. What actually matters is the energy density of the EM field. A microwave oven cooks food because its putting more than 1000 watts into a small confined space, your cellphone doesn’t because its transmitter is shooting less than 1 watt into the open air (where the energy density quickly diminishes by the square cube law).
No Idea, never went to.school in USA. They haven’t cooked anyone while sending them to the moon so can’t be that bad.
Uh…they actually got this tech working.
Will the US get this tech working? Can’t get anything working after slashing all research and kicking 10,000 phds out of the country.
Cletus and his Ram 1500 is not going to figure this out.
I have no knowledge in this and it’s early, but what happens to birds in the medium in between the receiver and emitter?
This can’t be good for them.
Nothing. It’s non-ionizing radiation.
Microwaves ovens work by using extreme amounts of energy concentrated into a very small area.
Microwave beams for energy transmission are different.
We’ve known this since at least 1996 when the first paper talking about it was published.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0038092X95000834
The biggest obstacle for it is actually RFI.
Edit to add, and here’s a NASA paper from the 1980s talking about it
I think it’s worth saying that while not ionizing, high power high gain RF can cause damage via burns. Not sure how much power/gain is used in this situation though. Staying away from unfamiliar transmitting antennas is in general a good thing.
Sounds:
- Pretty advanced
- Pretty expensive
- Quite useless (I mean it definitely has its uses, but I think you could find much cheaper and simpler solutions)
“… you could find much cheaper and simpler solutions…”
Heat feelt thanks for your bold show of confidence in my technical capacities. Yet I have to disclose that I’m not exactly sure to be able to compete with a first world power like China.
No, not you! I meant that guy!
I mean this is really cool but at the same time doesnt seem usefull? Apparently the peak of modern combat is chinese drones with small bombs and a plastic fiber-optic cable attached to them lol.
There are a lot of different drones being used. For example you can’t use fiber-optic for drones that target something 100km afar. Either way the problem with this device is probably the same as with other anti-air systems - it costs, takes time to produce and to train the operator much much much more than to make a drone.
Neat but 3 hours of loitering is nothing for a fixed wing drone. We have drones that stay in flight for a month or more.
I have a 6 year old electric car that takes 40ish minutes to charge, now BYD has batteries that will go from 10% to 70% in 5-10 mins.
In a few years time these drones will be getting charged from a microwave stream of power from a solar array floating in the upper atmosphere.
Yes but you are charging through a conductive cable. It’s not even remotely the same as charging something with microwaves.
The power delivered decreases exponentially with distance. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “inverse square law”.
Because you divide the effect and gain by 4pi(r^2) meaning your output is decreased by 75% every time you double the distance.
You’re going to need ridiculously powerful hardware and an enormous amount of electricity to run it on any meaningful distance.
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