In the case of drones, the fiber optic cable provides a direct, stable, and high-capacity link for both power and data transmission. [...] The fiber optic cable also supplies power to the drone, meaning the UAV doesn’t need a huge battery onboard.

[–] lurklurk@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago

There's no way that's correct though, with current technology

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago

Maybe this is why we shouldn't have AI write articles. Does the drone have a solar panel on the other end of the cable?

[–] perestroika@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Sadly, the article has been written by a non-competent person.

I can claim to be a competent person and explain a bit.

At a drone's own voltage (4..8 lithium cells in series), powering an FPV attack drone requires 2 wires of 2,5 - 4,0 square millimeters of thickness. One meter of this pair of wires weighs about 50 grams. One kilometer would weigh 50 kilograms, but would exhibit a voltage drop proportional to length, so in reality, you'd need to increase the diameter several times.

If one was into physical experiments, using super high voltage and thinner wires, this could be brought down, but voltage converters on both ends would gain weight and insulation thickness would have to increase: as you raise voltage in an electrical cable (e.g. into kilovolts) current starts arcing across air gaps and breaking though insulation. That's why high voltage power lines have long ceramic / glass insulators. :) So building a hypothetical "330 kilovolt drone" would be the last thing anyone would do. :)

[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I have to imagine the article is just wrong about this part, but maybe there's something I'm missing.

[–] aramis87@fedia.io 4 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Power Over Fiber "is a technology in which a fiber-optic cable carries optical power, which is used as an energy source rather than, or as well as, carrying data".

[–] aard@kyu.de 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Now I'd recommend looking up how much power can be transported by the very few implementations out there, and how much they cost.

Anything coming close to being able to power a drone would need way thicker fibers, increasing the drone weight. Any too big bend would set the fiber on fire. And it costs so much that building a slightly bigger drone with more batteries is cheaper.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago

To save people the click:

Commercial systems generally deliver about a watt at 10-20 meters, which of course drops with distance and depends on fiber quality. It also requires a separate fiber(pair) from the data fiber.

A small DJI burns about 100 watts

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Has it actually been deployed for aerial drones, or just theoretically?

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 4 points 5 days ago

See reference [1] if the article: https://optics.org/news/4/5/1

It seems to work at least for small surveillance drones.

[–] perestroika@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The keyword is "optical power": laser light. But a drone doesn't need laser light to fly, it needs electrical power. Payload carrying drones need considerable amounts, 1 kilowatt might be typical. There is no readily available equipment to convert that amount of optical power into electrical power inside a drone, at an acceptable efficiency (solar panels have an efficiency of ~25%).

In addition, it helps to know: these drones use a single 25 micrometer single mode fiber (the power of the fiber transceivers is in milliwatts). It is hard to pack considerable power into that cross section, the optics are complicated (optics aside, a kilowatt class laser is very expensive). When you transmit laser power over fiber, you generally benefit from using a cable made of many fibers, or a considerably thicker multimode fiber.