Scientists in China have demonstrated a wireless power transmission system that uses a ground-based microwave emitter to beam energy to an antenna array mounted on the aircraft’s underside. Importantly, they were able to do this while both the drone and charging system were in motion.
In tests, the car-mounted system kept fixed-wing drones in the air for up to 3.1 hours at an altitude of 15 metres (49 feet). The key challenge that the team overcame was maintaining alignment between the emitter and the drone during flight, wrote Song Liwei, the project’s leader.
I’ve lost count of technologies during my lifetime that had initial skeptics of ‘seems cool, but who would use this?,’ and then that tech became ubiquitous or essential within a decade.
Room-sized computers that required punch cards also seemed cool but mostly useless once.