LaserMotive: 2010 Year In Review
Written by Tom Nugent on Friday, December 31st, 2010
In the closing moments of 2010, not only does the year mark the end of the first decade of the 21st century, but a milestone year as well for LaserMotive and the development of laser power beaming. From an array of industry awards to record breaking laser powered helicopter demos, 2010 has been an important and pivotal year for LaserMotive in our quest to commercialize the wireless transfer of energy via lasers.
From the start of 2010 and just on the heels of its win in the NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Competition (bringing home a purse prize of nearly $1 million), LaserMotive has garnered a number of business and technical achievements throughout the year that we believe will lay the groundwork for even greater ones in the upcoming year. Among the highlights of 2010 are:
- Starting the commercialization of laser power beaming, as LaserMotive used some of the NASA prize money to hire two team members full time.
- Release of our white paper on power beaming to UAVs, which garnered a surprisingly large amount of publicity.
- Attendance at AUVSI trade show in August, along with our public demo of the laser-powered micro-helicopter, flying for as long as 6 hours at a time and setting a record.
- Demo in October of a free-flying laser-powered quadrocopter, barely 2 months after meeting our partners in the endeavor (Ascending Technologies), and setting a number of technical records in the process.
- Receipt of a variety of industry awards, including Seattle Business Magazine’s “Innovators of the Year,” the Northwest Entrepreneur Network’s First Look Forum, and winners of the MIT Enterprise Forum’s NW Startup DEMO.
There was lots of work that generated interest from potential customers and partners. We can’t say much about those discussions at present, but hope to be able to share more with you in 2011 as these relationships come to fruition.
We’d like to thank all of you for your support in the past year, and wish you the very best in the upcoming New Year!