Wireless Power Transfer for 3D Printed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Systems

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted a lot of attention for various applications such as service delivery, pollution mitigation, farming, and rescue operations over the past few years. However, the short duration of battery and the inconvenience of changing it is always a problem. Basically, small UAVs can only carry very limited payloads otherwise the battery will be drained more frequently. This project presents an automatic and high-efficient wireless power transfer (WPT) to supply a 3D printed UAV. A UAV has been 3D printed with wireless power transfer kit implemented to charge 3S 1500 mAh Li-Po battery with up to 1000 mAh automatically once it is landed, without manual operation. 24V DC is supplied to the transmitting side of WPT with the operating frequency at 180kHz and once the battery is fully charged, the charging process will also stop automatically.