ECE.15R – Skii Charge: A Wireless Fast-Charging Nest Made of an Array of Antennas for Drones (UAVs)

• Christian Casimiro
• Mahdi Mohammad
• Ripley Murawski
• Ahmed Nasr
• Adrian Velazquez

In recent years, we have seen an increased interest in drones to complete a variety of tasks from military base protection to deliveries. Certain companies, like those invested in deliveries, plan to use drones as a supplement to their drivers to help with delivering packages to different customers directly. This strategy highlighted a significant problem in the existing drone market: the absence of affordable drones capable of sustaining long flight times without human intervention for battery changes, necessitating the use of multiple drones for a single task through manual control. Previous research explored this challenge and yielded some promising results; however, most solutions continued to depend on manual battery changes. Market-available drone models that offer longer flight times are exceedingly expensive and require the purchase of specialized drones. Our project tackled this problem by developing an innovative, cost-effective solution that required only minor modifications to current drone models and by developing a scheduling algorithm onboard the charging station that will assign drones charging pads on the fly depending on their mission priority. Utilizing capacitors as a temporary power storage, we equipped drones with the capability for extended flight durations. Onboard the drone will be a receiving antenna that will have two RF-DC converters that will convert the RF signal of 433MHz coming from the charging station into a charging circuit that will be controlled via relays that will connect to a Battery Management System to charge the Li-PO battery onboard the drone once it has landed. The charging circuit onboard is modified to provide a fast, reliable and safe method in charging the battery without the need of any human intervention and prevent any damage to the battery by utilizing capacitors that will help reduce voltage spikes and electrical noise as these can harm the components on board. The expected results are to cut down charging times of Li-Po batteries with a mis-alignment free charging station that is able to cater to several drones on the job through a scheduling algorithm. The impact of our project was considerable, offering a viable and scalable approach to extending drone operations by providing a safe, reliable and cheaper method of charging on the go.