UAV/Drone Fast Wireless Charging FRP Frustum Port for 85-kHz 50-V 10-A Inductive Power Transfer

UAVs or drones have been employed in lots of applications, including various industrial purposes such as social infrastructure monitoring, precision agriculture, and small scale logistics. Since large industrial drones usually convey large batteries, a fast charger with large-current output is desired. Although wireless charging stations for drones have recently been reported in the literature, the charging currents in those reports are several amperes or less. This paper reports a fast wireless charging port for an 85-kHz band 50-V 10-A inductive power transfer system, which is made of fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) to be used out of doors. The unique frustum structure of the charging port, which has been proposed by authors and their colleague, is advantageous on high coupling between transmit and receive coils, light weight of receive coil, prevention of misalignment even by gusting wind. The measurement of the whole 85-kHz band inductive charging system including the FRP charging port and the receive coil mounted to the legs of commercial drone shows that received dc current is more than 10 A. This result indicates the potential of the proposed wireless charging frustum port for fast wireless charging for mid-sized and large drones.