Laser-Powered Drone Achieves “Infinite Flight.” Are The Claims True?

A company by the name of PowerLight Technologies, out of Kent, Washington, may have found the secret to the age-old war between UAS and batteries: laser-powered drones.

No, I’m not kidding. PowerLight claims to have created a way to power long-endurance fixed-wing drones by using ground-based lasers that can charge them up to (nearly) one mile away, and it’s called Power Beaming. In 2020, PowerLight released a demonstration video in which they powered a bunch of Christmas lights wirelessly, using their Power Beam technology in an urban setting.

What is PowerLight?

PowerLight was originally named LaserMotive. They’ve been working with Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of Radition (LASER) technology longer than most of my high school students have been alive.

LaserMotive was founded in 2007, but they began garnering public attention in 2009, when they won NASA’s Power Beaming Challenge, along with an award of $900,000. PowerLight is not new to this field. In fact, they’re pioneers in laser-powered drone technology.

How Has PowerLight achieved “Infinite Flight”?

When you hear “infinite flight,” think “indefinite flight as long as the beam stays locked and unobstructed.” This is not a drone magically running forever on a single tiny solar panel. A ground-based transmitter sends energy upward as a laser beam, and the aircraft has a receiver that converts that energy into electrical power. The drone itself will have some kind of battery cell(s) onboard for energy storage.

If the link stays healthy, and the tracking system does its job, a laser-powered drone can keep flying without landing to recharge. Some of the use-cases could include:

• Staying over a wildfire edge to relay information to rescue teams on the ground
• Loitering over a disaster area to provide cell-signal and vital location data for rescuers
• Keeping eyes on an objective without worrying about swapping batteries every 20 minutes

The Basics

After watching their video on Power Beaming, I have to say; I’m actually pretty impressed with the tech demo in 2020. Now I’m really looking forward to the live-demo for this active tracking/charging combo – whenever that will be.

This entire Power Beaming system contains four parts:

• The Transmitter
  • The transmitter is a giant ground station that worries about sending a strong enough signal to reach the receiver onboard the aircraft.
• Tracking System
  • Built into the transmitter, and in this case, the base station it’s attached to.
• The Receiver
  • The receiver onboard the aircraft will typically be a specialized “photovoltaic converter”, not a solar panel. The receiver’s job in this example is to receive the light coming from the transmitter, and convert that into usable energy.
• Control/Safety Logic Loop
  • A laser-powered drone system has to perform charging functions while in-flight, which could spell disaster depending on the environment the laser-powered drone is used in.

Why you should care about laser-powered drones now

First and foremost, drone warfare is currently dominating battlefields across the globe – there’s no question about it. Most of the FPV footage seen coming out from Ukraine is obtained from DVR recordings of analog video, or DJI Mavic’s, but we’re rarely seeing footage from loitering aircraft released.

While there are multiple reasons, the most important is that they’re “loitering,” or hanging around at higher altitudes to relay information to the appropriate people. Unless an FPV drone is specifically hunting aircraft, they won’t be concerned with a drone a few miles above their heads (especially if they can’t see it).

For those aircraft that have a longer lifespan, a laser-powered drone transmitter that can be deployed during the night remotely, and disappear before morning, sounds like a godsend for intelligence operations.

Okay… What’s the catch?

A laser-powered drone needs to have line-of-sight. Fog, smoke, dust, etc. will degrade the signal strength. Once you’ve got a beam powerful enough to reach a drone 5,000 feet up, then you’re dealing with the cost of converting stored energy into light, and that comes at a cost.

Safety is also a major question that the company has addressed, and they claim the technology is safe to be near without eye-protection, but I won’t be first in line to test it.

DroneXL’s Take

Not every task requires a drone that can stay in the air for hours or days at a time, but the technology involved in PowerLight’s project has the potential for world-changing impact.

Imagine being able to wirelessly charge any electronic device using light rays – the possibilities would be endless. A company could charge its fleet of electric vehicles using giant spotlights at night; or we could eventually have commercial flights that only land once a month, and other airlines dock with them mid-flight to transfer passengers.

I wasn’t familiar with PowerLight’s journey previously, but I’m blown away by the work they’ve put into the UAS industry over the past fifteen years. Let me know below what applications you’d like to see this wireless-charging tech used for in the future!