Generating power from wind is easy – just stick a windmill on a pole and attach a generator. That’s not particularly cool, though, so [Adrien] and his team from his senior design project are using an autonomously controlled kite to generate power
The basic idea of generating electrical energy from a kite is to fly it around in figure-eights while unwinding the kite line from a spool. The very strong forces on the kite lines can be used to drive a generator which supplies power for reeling the kite back in at a lower angle of attack. You can check out [Adrien]’s kite power theory page for a few a lot more details on how this works.
Right now, [Adrien] and his team have a basic rig set up to generate power and are flying the kite by means of a joystick. Updates are coming, and you can check out the video of their RC kite in action after the break.
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