Interrogation and Charging of Embedded Sensors by Autonomous Vehicles

This paper presents a concept and experimental results for end-to-end energy-autonomous sensor systems using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) as agents for power delivery to and data gathering from sensing devices. Such systems are particularly useful for delay tolerant monitoring scenarios in which the sensing devices are deployed in remote or harsh conditions, often with sparse connectivity, long life and high reliability requirements. Results presented include miniaturisation of wireless charging hardware for drones of low payload capacity, methods for navigation to and alignment with sensors for efficient power transfer, and some data transfer aspects.