Ever since we started going to fairs to show off the Crazyflies, we’ve been trying to push the boundaries for the demos. Often we’ve used the fairs as an opportunity to either develop new functionality or try out new ideas. Something we’ve always been interested in, especially for fairs, is autonomous flights. It’s hard to talk to people about the Crazyflie while trying to fly it at the same time. Back in 2015 we were using the Kinect for piloting the Crazyflie at the Bay Area Maker Faire. Although awesome, we had a slight issue: we needed to switch batteries on the Crazyflie each flight. We had a Qi deck for wireless charging but no positioning system good enough to use it for landing on a charger.
In 2018 we were really excited when we got to borrow a motion capture system from Qualisys and could finally land on a Qi charger (3D printed base and an IKEA Qi charger). First time we showed this off was at IROS in Madrid 2018. The following year we improved the demo to have more Crazyflies and switched to the Lighthouse positioning system at ICRA 2019. Since then each year we have been improving the demo until we’ve reached the current state we showed off at IROS 2022 in Kyoto.
So since 2018 we’ve been using the Qi wireless charging for our demos. Many customers have purchased the Qi charging deck, but building a matching charging platform has always required some effort. So, a while back we started looking at something that could replace the Qi deck, with a lighter solution which would also allow users to have other decks with electronics facing downwards. The first prototypes were made with the Crazyflie 2.1 back in 2021 using decks, but they were a bit clumsy. For one thing you needed the charging solution to be integrated on each deck.
When work started on the Crazyflie Brushless we realized we had the possibility to integrate the charge points directly on the main PCB which meant we could still use any decks we wanted and get the charging. So the prototypes from 2021 were reshaped into something we could use with the Crazyflie Brushless. Although the prototypes worked well, they were pretty big and packed with features which weren’t needed for charging (like LED lights and WiFi). Another iteration and the chargers have now gone down in size and complexity. The latest iteration only has charging and is powered via our 12V power block or 5V USB-C.
Over the years lots of customers have asked us for buying the Qi charger, since many users do not have the capabilities to build their own. Unfortunately we’ve never gotten around to it, but with the release of the Crazyflie Brushless we would like to change this. The release is only a few months away so we’re short on time for remaking the design so it’s usable for plastic molding. Instead the plan is to make a limited amount of prototypes available to our users, based on the same 3D printed design and electronics we’re currently using in our flight lab, at the time of release. This will enable our users to easily try out the design and create their own autonomous demos which will keep flying for a long time.