Power Management for Long-Range Drones

Compact, quiet, and multi-purpose vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft with electric propulsion and articulating thrusters for enhanced safety, flexibility, and efficiency. The aircraft has a modular fuselage design to accommodate passengers, cargo, and medical transport. The main rotors provide lift, and tiltable thrusters provide additional lift, thrust, and control. The thrusters can rotate from 0 to 90 degrees for forward flight and have elevons for roll/pitch control. This allows efficient hovering, cruise efficiency, and reduced noise compared to traditional helicopters. The aircraft has separate electric motors for the thrusters to avoid complex transmissions. It also has a modular battery system for charging or swapping to extend range.

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An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can transition between flying and rolling on the ground using a passively deformable airframe. The UAV has a rolling structure inside a body with reconfigurable joints connecting the body to the propellers. The joints allow the propeller arms to pivot and reorient as the UAV transitions between flying and rolling. This enables efficient rolling motion with lower power consumption compared to flying. The UAV can also directly control rolling and turning motions while rolling.

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A power supply system for unmanned aerial vehicles that allows tethered flight with interchangeable ground stations to provide power to the UAVs. The system has a ground station with a connector to connect the tether to the ground power supply. The UAV has an aerial power supply with a connector to connect the tether. The ground station can deliver a selected voltage to the tether. The aerial power supply converts the voltage on the tether to the UAV's required voltage. This allows using the same aerial power supply for different UAVs by matching the ground station voltage to the UAV's power needs.

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Wireless power delivery system that enables long-range power transmission to devices like drones and electronics far away from the power source using an array of antennas. The system receives beacon signals from client devices to determine their locations. It then focuses energy delivery to those devices by adjusting phase of the signals sent through the antenna array. This allows efficient wireless charging over longer distances compared to close-range magnetic resonance systems.

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Autonomous drone operations using docking stations integrated into clothing, helmets, vehicles, etc. The drones can autonomously dock, charge, and transfer power wirelessly to the stations. They can also form groups to coordinate tasks and share functions. The stations have imaging sensors to guide drone docking. The drones have docking ports to connect to the stations. This allows continuous drone flight with in-air docking and charging.

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Drones can land on fixed security cameras to recharge their batteries and transfer data using dedicated landing pads on the cameras. This allows drones to extend their flight time and reliably transmit captured footage by leveraging the power and connectivity of fixed cameras. The drone landing pads on cameras have power ports to recharge drone batteries and data ports to transfer drone data. When a drone lands, it connects to these ports on the camera to access its power and network connection. This enables the drone to recharge mid-flight and offload its data to the camera's network connection.

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An aircraft power system that combines an electric motor and a gas turbine to extend the range of electric aircraft. The system has a compact, high-power density design with a unique gearbox configuration. The gas turbine compressor and electric motor are integrated together with a gearbox that has multiple spur gear stages. This allows both the compressor and motor to share the same output shaft. A freewheel mechanism allows the motor to disconnect from the shaft during regenerative braking. This allows the gas turbine to spin the motor for charging during descent, while the motor spins the compressor during climb. The integrated layout reduces size and weight compared to separate motor and turbine systems.

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Distributed multi-propeller vertical take-off and landing aircraft hybrid power system for long range flight with improved endurance. The system has a parallel hybrid setup with multiple engines, generators, batteries, and motors. The engines, generators, and batteries are integrated and share cooling/lubrication. The system intelligently manages power allocation between engines, batteries, and motors based on flight mode and accelerator position. In vertical takeoff/landing, all engines start and provide peak power. In hover/cruise, batteries power the motors until needed, then engines ramp up. This allows smaller engines for cruising and avoids oversizing. In emergency, a failed engine is disconnected and batteries/adjacent engine take over.

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Hybrid power system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that improves flight safety and stability by stabilizing the power output. The hybrid system combines an engine with a battery pack. A control system monitors the UAV's power demands and generates compensating signals. It adjusts the engine throttle and battery charging to match the power needs. This compensates for engine output lag and stabilizes the overall power supply. The control logic uses feedforward compensation based on UAV demand changes.

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A hybrid propulsion system and control method for lightweight fixed-wing UAVs weighing 60-70 kg that improves efficiency, flexibility, and noise reduction compared to traditional direct-drive engines. The hybrid system uses a gas engine and electric motors. It has four power modes: fastest, standard (most efficient), energy-saving, and silent. The standard and energy-saving modes use a learning algorithm to optimize power distribution between engines and motors based on flight conditions. This adaptive hybrid power system enables targeted performance optimization, improves fuel efficiency, and allows silent cruising for missions requiring stealth.

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Method for flying electric aircraft using contactless network wireless power supply to enable long-duration flights without carrying heavy batteries. The method involves using wireless charging pads on the ground power grid to charge the aircraft mid-air. The aircraft routes are optimized based on environmental factors to conserve energy. This allows the aircraft to fly for longer distances without needing to land and swap batteries. The wireless charging eliminates the need for onboard batteries and restrictive flight paths near power lines.

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Hybrid power system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that improves efficiency and endurance compared to using just batteries or engines. The system uses a combination of a piston engine, generator, electric motor, clutch, and battery pack. It allows the UAV to fly in different modes optimized for specific conditions. The modes include engine power alone, motor power alone, engine and motor simultaneously, and engine with generator charging the battery. This enables the UAV to operate efficiently in various flight scenarios by matching the power sources to the demands.

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Hybrid unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that uses parallel high-power density and high-energy density power sources to enable vertical takeoff/landing and extended flight time. The UAV has a fuselage and wings, with the power system being a brushless motor driving a propeller. Inside the fuselage, there are separate sets of high-power density (lithium batteries) and high-energy density (combinations of lithium batteries, fuel cells, solar cells, and internal combustion engines) power sources. During vertical takeoff/landing, the high-power density batteries power the propeller. For extended flight, the high-energy density batteries provide power and can charge the high-power density batteries. This allows the UAV to balance high-power needs for vertical takeoff/landing with extended flight range using optimized power sources.

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Long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hybrid power system that combines a lithium battery with a fuel engine and generator for efficient and lightweight power. The system uses a flight control system to optimize power usage based on altitude and load. It starts with the battery providing power during takeoff, then charges during flight. At high altitudes, the engine shuts off and the battery powers the UAV. This avoids inefficiencies of always using the engine. The engine restarts when descending to recharge the battery. It also uses high-altitude restart and short-term motor overload to save weight. The system switches between subsystems based on sensors like altitude and temperature.

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Energy efficient method for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to wake up and communicate with sensor nodes in a wireless network where the nodes can't be powered by wires or batteries. The method involves optimizing the UAV's flight path and the sensor nodes' wakeup times to minimize total energy consumption. It splits the communication process into two stages: setup and data transfer. By alternately optimizing the node schedules and UAV path, it finds a suboptimal solution to the mixed integer nonconvex optimization problem.

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Optimizing resource allocation for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in wireless power supply networks to improve system efficiency and prevent data loss. The method jointly optimizes UAV flight position, wireless energy transmission time, and wireless information transmission time for multiple ground nodes. It maximizes the sum of effective capacities, which represents the maximum constant arrival rate of data that can be supported with guaranteed quality of service. This reduces delay and prevents backlogging in node buffers. By considering both energy and information transmission, it improves overall resource utilization compared to separating them.

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Downlink power control for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data links that improves efficiency and range by adjusting transmission power based on UAV distance. The power control method involves the UAV and ground station exchanging distance measurements over the uplink. The ground station provides the UAV with a lookup table of transmit powers based on distance segments. The UAV then uses the segmented table to automatically adjust its downlink power as it flies. This reduces power consumption compared to fixed power or open loop methods while maintaining reliable communication over long distances.

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Low-power consumption optimization method for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted backscatter edge computing networks. The method involves using UAVs to provide energy and computation offloading for devices with limited power and shielding between them and base stations. The UAVs transmit RF signals to power the devices, which communicate with the UAVs using backscatter. Devices offload computationally intensive tasks to the UAVs, which return results. This allows devices to conserve power compared to active transmission. Devices store remaining UAV-provided energy for later use. The UAV trajectory is optimized to balance energy consumption vs QoS.

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Method for optimizing energy utilization and network coverage in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted wireless sensor networks. The method involves two phases: node registration and energy carrying communication. In the registration phase, sensor nodes inform the UAV of their energy levels. In the communication phase, the UAV hovers over nodes with low energy to charge them. The UAV balances charging time vs flight distance to maximize coverage. It also maintains a minimum received power threshold to ensure efficient charging. By registering node energy and balancing charging vs flight, the UAV can optimize energy utilization and distribute charge evenly among nodes.

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Energy-efficient unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) relay cooperative communication system for expanding network coverage with optimal power consumption. The method involves UAV relays collecting energy from previous relays instead of batteries. It optimizes relay node placement, signal coding, and power allocation to maximize information rate while minimizing energy consumption. The UAV relays cooperatively transmit data by relaying signals through multiple hops. The method uses signal-to-noise ratio approximations to convert the optimization problem into convex form for efficient solution.

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