WiBotic's PowerPad Pro undergoes testing in a farm field. (WiBotic Photo)
Seattle-based WiBotic has made a name for itself with battery charging stations for drones as well as for ground-based robots, and now its best-known charger is getting smarter.
WiBotic’s PowerPad Pro can bring in any type of drone for autonomous charging — without needing a human operator to guide it in — and also download a drone’s high-resolution data for transmission to a remote mission control center.
“We’ve really solved the power and data piece for this,” Ben Waters, Wibotic’s co-founder and CEO, told me.
Starship prototypes serve as a backdrop for T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. (T-Mobile Photo)
T-Mobile subscribers will be getting a satellite upgrade to their wireless service, thanks to a newly announced partnership that takes advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
But don’t expect to start streaming high-definition videos via satellite to your T-Mobile connected devices immediately: The beta version of Starlink’s broadband boost is due to roll out in select areas by the end of next year, after a series of SpaceX satellite launches.
That rollout will begin with text messaging, including SMS, MMS and messaging apps. Voice and data coverage will come later.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk laid out the details behind the deal today during a live presentation at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas.
Sievert said the partnership calls for creating a new network, composed of Starlink satellites that can use T-Mobile’s mid-band spectrum nationwide. He said the vast majority of smartphones already on its network would be compatible with the new satellite-plus-cellular service.
“You can connect with your existing phone,” Sievert promised. He said he expected to include the Starlink-enabled service free with T-Mobile’s most popular plans. With less popular plans, a monthly fee might be charged, he said.
An artist’s conception shows Starlink satellites in orbit. (SpaceX Illustration)
The CEOs of SpaceX and T-Mobile will join forces to reveal how their companies will work together to increase wireless connectivity.
Details about the announcement, set to be live-streamed at 7 p.m. CT (5 p.m. PT) Aug. 25 from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, haven’t been made public. But the plan seems likely to involve using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation and T-Mobile’s cellular network to boost subscribers’ access and both companies’ fortunes.
“This is something special,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet.
Mike Sievert, the CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile, will join Musk for the presentation on YouTube.
Electric Sky will explore adapting its wireless charging architecture to power a swarm of drones. (Army Research Laboratory Illustration)
A startup called Electric Sky says it’s begun building its first Whisper Beam transmitter for providing tightly focused wireless power to drones in flight, thanks to a $225,000 award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Electric Sky will use the six-month Phase I award, granted through DARPA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, to explore ways to adapt its wireless architecture to power a swarm of drones.
The first phase of the project calls for building and testing a lab-bench demonstration system that would operate at short distances. Those experiments are expected to supply data that can be used to upgrade the system for higher power and longer distances.
Electric Sky has offices in the Seattle area as well as in Midland, Texas. Its CEO is Robert Millman, who previously served as general counsel for Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. Former XCOR Aerospace CEO Jeff Greason is the company’s co-founder, chief technologist and the inventor of the Whisper Beam system.
The company’s mission is to pioneer novel electric power and propulsion technologies for aircraft and flight vehicles of all sizes.
Artwork shows how laser beaming stations can transmit power wirelessly to 5G base stations and drones. (Ericsson / PowerLight Illustration)
Beaming power wirelessly using laser beams has been the stuff of science fiction for decades — but Kent, Wash.-based PowerLight Technologies and Ericsson, the Swedish-based multinational telecommunications company, have shown how it can become a reality for 5G wireless service.
It may take a couple of years for PowerLight’s beamed-power system to get integrated into Ericsson’s 5G equipment, but the proof-of-concept demonstration could help usher in an age when wireless power is as widely accepted as wireless communication is today.
“The idea that Ericsson is promoting is, we now have wireless connectivity,” PowerLight CEO Richard Gustafson told GeekWire. “It’s time to cut the final cord — and that’s the power cord.”
Gustafson said PowerLight is taking a “crawl, walk, run” approach to wireless power.
“That is not to go from our proof of concept to an urban environment, but to start to work toward packaging for an environment such as disaster response or emergency response, where you’ve got to get equipment up and running quickly,” he said.
The demonstration for Ericsson was conducted at and around PowerLight’s facilities in Kent at the end of July.
A drone outfitted with WiBotic’s wireless charger sits on top of a WiBotic PowerPad. (WiBotic Photo)
Two of the wireless charging systems made by Seattle-based WiBotic have won safety approvals in Europe, marking what the startup’s CEO calls a major milestone.
The chargers and transmitters now have CE Mark approval, which means they meet the safety, health and environmental protection requirements for the European Economic Area. What’s more, the systems have been found to comply with the International Electrotechnical Commission’s directives for the European Union and Canada’s CSA Group standards organization.
“We also recently completed FCC approval in the U.S., so our systems are compliant with reputable regulatory agencies within many countries around the world,” WiBotic CEO Ben Waters said today in a news release. “This, in turn, opens several exciting partnership and deployment opportunities for us across Europe, Canada and beyond.”
WiBotic, which was spun out from the University of Washington in 2015, has developed battery charging systems that can power up autonomous drones as well as robots on land or sea wirelessly, without human intervention. The company’s power management software, known as Commander, can work with the hardware to optimize battery use for an entire fleet of robots.
Pivotal Commware's millimeter-wave repeaters enhance the performance of 5G wireless networks. (Pivotal Commware Photo)
Kirkland, Wash.-based Pivotal Commware says it has closed on a $50 million funding round that will help it expand research, development and distribution for its millimeter-wave 5G network infrastructure products.
Tracker Capital Management, a venture capital investment firm that’s headquartered in New York, led the Series C investment round. Other participants in the financing include Devonshire Investors and Pivotal’s existing investors — including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Gates has been investing in Pivotal since 2017, not long after it was spun out from Intellectual Ventures. It’s one of several Gates-backed ventures that make use of metamaterials, an exotic breed of electronics that can channel signals without moving parts.
Pivotal calls its metamaterials-based technology “holographic beam forming.” The technology is used primarily to support ultra-wideband 5G communications.
Astrobotic’s CubeRover prototype wheels over a simulated lunar surface. (Astrobotic via YouTube)
Seattle-based WiBotic says it’s working on a wireless charging system and energy management software for moon rovers, in partnership with Astrobotic, Bosch and the University of Washington.
The hardware and software for robotic lunar missions will build on the work that the UW spin-out has done on similar systems for applications here on Earth.
“We’ve conquered marine robotic systems, mobile terrestrial robots, aerial drones — and now, space,” WiBotic CEO and co-founder Ben Waters told GeekWire.
The team-up is supported by a $5.8 million NASA “Tipping Point” contract to overcome the power challenges that will face robots on the moon’s surface. One of the biggest challenges will be providing electric-powered rovers with enough juice to keep them active during the cold lunar night, which lasts two weeks.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic is the prime contractor. It aims to use WiBotic’s charging system on lunar rovers that will include its own CubeRover, a shoebox-sized, four-wheeled robot that would venture forth from a base station to take on exploration tasks.
“Bringing wireless power technology to the surface of the moon and beyond is a game-changer in the way space robotics systems have traditionally interacted,” Cedric Corpa de la Fuente, electrical engineer for planetary mobility at Astrobotic, said today in a news release.
A Jackal robot equipped with a WiBotic wireless power kit pulls up to a charging station at a construction site. (WiBotic Photo)
The Federal Communications Commission has given the go-ahead for Seattle-based WiBotic’s wireless charging system to provide up to 300 watts of over-the-air power to robots, drones and other battery-powered devices.
“FCC approval is not only an accomplishment for our team, but also for our customers and the industry,” WiBotic CEO Ben Waters said today in a news release.
“Previously, only low-power cellphone and small electronics chargers or very high-power electric vehicle chargers were approved for widespread use,” Waters said. “WiBotic is now providing a solution that lets the entire automation industry take advantage of the wireless power revolution.”
The FCC’s authorization, issued last month, should boost confidence among WiBotic’s customers that the company’s system meets regulatory requirements. “This will let them deploy larger fleets faster than would otherwise be possible,” the company’s vice president for business development, told Unite.ai’s Antoine Tardif in an interview.
WiBotic’s system lets drones charge themselves up automatically when they touch down on a charging pad. Robots can pull up to a charging station and pull in power via antennas. WiBotic is also working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute on a wireless power system for underwater sensors.
The company’s power management software can work with the hardware to optimize battery use for entire fleets of electric-powered machines, without a human ever having to handle a plug. In a June interview, Waters said the hands-off approach is a particularly strong selling point as companies that rely on automation struggle to cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
WiBotic, which was spun out from the University of Washington in 2015, reported raising $5.7 million in a Series A funding round in June, bringing total investment to nearly $9 million. Investors in that round included Junson Capital, SV Tech Ventures, Rolling Bay Ventures, Aves Capital, The W Fund and WRF.
An artist’s conception shows a constellation of satellites in orbit. (Credit: OneWeb)
Apple has joined SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon and other companies in targeting the market for satellite internet services, Bloomberg News reported today.
Bloomberg quoted unidentified people familiar with the work as saying that the California-based company has a secret team working on technologies that it could use to beam internet services directly to devices, bypassing wireless networks. The effort is reportedly still in its early stages and may not necessarily come to fruition.
Apple did not immediately respond to GeekWire’s inquiries about the report.
