14 DAY TRIAL // Everybody is talking about drones these days, but apart from being at the center of the discussions related to regulations, safety and surveillance, quad-copers also come with another caveat.
Their overall battery life is less than desirable and most of you would probably love it if they could fly the thing for more than a few minutes.
This is why Berlin-based startup SkySense has come up with a possible solution to resolve the woes of drone users craving a little more juice out of their drones.
SkySense developed a fast charging pad for landing drones
The company has designed a landing pad that can be used as a wireless charging station. So as soon as you can fly your drone home on the pad, it will start charging, allowing work to be resumed as soon as possible.
The SkySense Charging Pad has actually been designed for professional use and will probably be deployed in industries such as conservation, agriculture, energy and emergency services.
Drones that activate in these spheres usually fly following some pre-set patterns, and what the SkySense team wants to prevent is quad-copters being pulled off from a job before completing it.
For this purpose, SkySense has assembled a gold-plated dock with 100-240V power input and a 10 A charge rate.
Charging the drone on the dock is uber simple, just land the device on it and wait for the current to go through the insides of the flying machine. SkySense says the platform is compatible with “nearly all existing multicopters and VTOL aircrafts.”
SkySense Charging Pad is compatible with a wide range of drones
SkySense has made the drone pad weatherproof so it can be used both in indoor and outdoor environments. The charging station is also available in three different sizes so it can accommodate drones of different types and sizes, including 17 inches / 43.2 cm, 34 inches / 86 cm and 68 inches / 172 cm.
For those deploying the charging pad somewhere outside, SkySense offers an add-on called Droneport which acts as a protective hangar for the drone.
It has other benefits too, like syncing the collected data to the cloud and offering connectivity with other drones in the network.
The concept seems quite interesting and in theory could be of use to amateur drone users too. If you’re interested in these gold plated charging pads, SkySense is offering them for pre-order now.
A compact version is up for grabs for $649 / €519, while the medium one is eligible for purchase for $1,425 / €1,141. Last but not least, the wide one sells for $4,365 / €3,494. The charging pads will start shipping in January 2015.
