Wireless Smart Charging Station for Multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspection has emerged as a crucial trend in the field of power inspection, owing to its high efficiency and convenience. However, its short cruising range considerably limits the inspection radius. Although wireless power transfer (WPT) technology has made UAV charging more convenient, the conventional "one-to-one" WPT method cannot meet the rapidly changing requirements of the UAV swarm. Therefore, this paper proposes a wireless smart charging station equipped with capacitive power transfer technology, which enables simultaneous wireless charging of multiple UAVs and improves the charging efficiency of UAV swarms. The proposed smart charging station utilizes a bilateral inductor-capacitor (LC) LC compensation topology, where the key is to keep the coupling mechanism port voltage constant regardless of the number of pickups. Moreover, with appropriate parameter design, the multi-pickups are ensured to have a constant current charging independent of load variations. Finally, theoretical analysis and circuit simulation are presented to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed multi-load wireless smart charging station.