Is charging drones on power lines a good idea?

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been found to be a very useful tool for safely inspecting power lines, but they do have one pretty big limitation — battery life. A team of researchers from the University of Southern Denmark is hoping to change that with a drone that can tap into power lines to get a charge.

The team believes that their system, which they’ve been developing for a few years now, is “a first-in-the-world system with the ability to sustain operation throughout many inspection/charging cycles powered by energy harvesting from power lines in a real outdoor environment.” For their latest version, the team used a Tarot 650 Sport drone customized with an electric quadcopter propulsion system, autopilot mode and a few other things.

The drone is programmed to seek out the nearest power line when it notices its battery is running low. It then uses an attached gripper system to clamp onto the line and draw power through an inductive charger. In one test, the drone was able to stay aloft for more than two hours, completing five cycles of inspection and charging.