The NASA Centennial Challenge for Power Beaming is a prize offered for a competitive demonstration of wireless power transmission. The minimum viable competition entry for 2007 was required to deliver greater than 200 watts to a moving 10‐kilogram vehicle over a vertical distance of 100 meters. We describe the design, construction, and operation of a laser power transmission system which considerably exceeds these minimum requirements, and which was built by a largely non‐professional team with minimal financial support in less than one year. The system uses commercially‐available 808 nm diode arrays and simple optics to produce a multikilowatt beam, approximately 1×0.6  m . An automated video tracking system with manual backup and a 1  m 2 steerable mirror direct the beam. The receiver is assembled from two types of GaAs photovoltaic cells in a unique configuration. Overall, the system could deliver in excess of 1 kW of DC power to a vehicle with an end to end efficiency of well over 10%, but due to inadequate testing and on‐site failures, it failed to win the 2007 prize.


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    Title :

    Laser Power Beaming On A Shoestring


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    BEAMED ENERGY PROPULSION: Fifth International Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion ; 2007 ; Kailua‐Kona (Hawaii)


    Published in:

    AIP Conference Proceedings ; 997 , 1 ; 97-108


    Publication date :

    2008-04-28


    Size :

    12 pages





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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