Soon, tiny flying helicopters will charge your phone

Dan Seitz Contributing Writer, Tech

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Quadrotors are rapidly becoming popular devices. They’re basically small robots with four helicopter blades that allow it to move and hover. And, if you’re a creepy Dutch artist, turn your dead cat into one.

But one thing they might be able to do is ensure you never need to worry about a dead cellphone in the middle of nowhere again. How? Through magnets.

It works like this. Both the quadrotor, which is just floating idly nearby somewhere, and your phone have a copper circle embedded into them. This creates a magnetic field when you run some electricity through it. Normally, these fields are weak.

But, when they get close enough to each other, they resonate; that is, they’re close enough in frequency that your cell phone will absorb the energy from that frequency. If you’ve ever seen an opera singer shatter a wine glass, or this famous video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge:

You understand the basic idea. It absorbs more and more of the energy.

This is still being worked on in the University of Nebraska lab, but it’s a pretty compelling idea that will help bring electricity to even the most obscure of places.

Quadrotor UAVs Used to Wirelessly Deliver Power [Gizmag]