The drone will fly to places where we will not send a manned vehicle because it would be too big or it would be too dangerous for the crew. However, drones still need human ground handling. The Israeli company Airobotics decided to eliminate this minor inconvenience.
The solution designed by the startup is a special docking station for drones. It has two important functions. Firstly, it allows empty batteries to be replaced with fully charged ones, and secondly, it allows the charge exchange of instruments carried by the machine.
The concept of quick battery replacement has already been tested by Tesla, the famous manufacturer of electric cars. Unfortunately, the solution presented by the Americans never went into commercial use, and many believe that developing such a theoretical possibility was just a legal ploy to obtain tax breaks in California.
The battery replacement system presented by Airobotics is not subject to any regulations, but only practical considerations. Quick replacement of discharged batteries with charged ones, carried out with the use of robotic arms, is to enable the continuous maintenance of as many drones as possible in flight operated by one base station.
Israeli drones landing at the station, apart from the batteries, can also replace the load. And it is not necessarily about delivering packages with purchases from AliExpress. Jews envisage the possibility of a quick replacement of measuring instruments carried by drones, such as high-resolution cameras, lidars, or devices that perform spectral measurements.
The cargo carried by Airobotics drones can reach a weight of up to 1 kg. The drone, named Optimus, can hover in the air for about half an hour with such a load. It’s not much, but few drones last longer. Qualcomm, the American tycoon in the production of integrated circuits, decided to use its experience in the mobile phone industry and accelerate the charging process due to such a low endurance of batteries. A less known company, Intelligent Energy, decided to focus on powering drones with fuel cells. Perhaps soon we will see how these solutions will perform compared to the Airobotics docking station.
Of course, apart from the maintenance of drones, people are also needed to control them. At least for the time being, in most applications. Airobotics is also working on software to help the drones perform their missions independently. The software developed by the company is to create an open platform that allows users to modify and enrich the functionality, giving almost unlimited possibilities for the development of software perfectly suited to the capabilities of both the drone itself and replaceable hardware modules. This is a very encouraging concept until one of the users becomes Skynet.
[źródło i grafika: gizmag.com]
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