Dave and I are at Photonics West this week, our first time at the show. (Jordin has attended many times in the past, but couldn’t make it this year.) While the number of booths visited at a trade show is certainly not the best way of measuring “success” when visiting exhibitors (i.e., potential vendors or partners), it’s an easy way to count. So, here’s a bit of trade show math about our progress through the exhibits. There are roughly 40 ‘rows’ of booths (with up to 40 booths per row; those rows with extra large booths reduce that number), spread across two halls at the Moscone Center. We will have at most ~19 hours (spread across three days) to visit the exhibits. That translates to visiting ~2.1 rows per hour if we wanted to see every single booth, however briefly.

On our first day, we did roughly 7 rows in 7 hours, i.e., 1 row/hour. This rate was much below the required average. Why so slow? Dave describes it as the “kid in a candy store” effect — there was so much to see and so many people to talk to, we spent a lot of time talking with vendors at lots of booths.

Today (day 2), we were more aggressive, and wound up covering 17 rows in 7 hours, or ~2.4 rows/hour (even with taking time to say hello to many of the sponsors of Team LaserMotive). That’s a little better than the ‘required’ average, but leaves 16 rows for the last day, a day when we will also be leaving early to catch a plane. In order to cover everything, we will need to average 3.2 rows/hour. Certain categories of product are represented by LOTS of businesses, so now that we’ve seen some of them we can breeze by others. But I suspect we’ll be sprinting down the last few rows before we head to the airport Thursday….

At LaserMotive, work is well underway for our entry in the next NASA sponsored Power Beaming Competition. Nothing is official yet, but it’s looking like the competition could happen in the May/June timeframe, and this year’s competition features a purse prize of $1.1 million.

“Our new climber must be significantly lighter than our successful 2009 version that won that year’s NASA Centennial Challenge for power beaming,” says LaserMotive’s Steve Burrows. “This is no easy task since that version was very light weight already!”

According to LaserMotive, the simplest way to make things lighter is to make them smaller, so most of the drive mechanism in the new version is about 30% smaller.

The first part LaserMotive is making is a wheel hub for the tire that grips the suspended cable. This part is made out of lightweight aluminum. First it is turned in a computer controlled (CNC) lathe to the exact profile LaserMotive designed.

Next the part is milled, drilled, and tapped, so other parts can attach to it with screws, in the large CNC mill (hub outside mill). The part is carefully checked to make sure it is exactly as designed.

It takes about six hours to program and make fixtures before parts like this come out of the machines. Once they are running, it takes only a few minutes for the CNC machines.

Molding the tire material to the hub is the last step, which will happen soon. Here’s the hub after being anodized, ready for the tire material to be molded to it.

We will post more about the competition as we receive any news.

As we move into 2011, we have a lot to look forward to at LaserMotive. Lasers themselves continue to get better. There is increasing knowledge of what power beaming is, and thus more opportunities for potential contracts for us. 

Specifically, we hope to see the following at LaserMotive in the upcoming year:

• We’ll continue to demonstrate our laser power beaming technology for new applications and with even better performance. In 2011, however, we’re looking at making at least some of these demos into paid projects specifically contracted by customers.
• We’re looking to participate in the next running of the NASA Power Beaming competition, and while not official it seems it might happen in May or June. The possibility of winning the remaining $1.1M purse prize and the potential infusion of additional capital would provide additional funds for our R&D work and thus further the development of the technology.
• In the meantime, we’re continuing our work on private fundraising efforts. We can’t offer more specifics in public, however, we believe our successes in awards and competitions, such as our performance at the MIT Enterprise Forum of the NW Startup Demo, and in the NWEN First Look Forum (where voting was done exclusively by leaders from the investment community) brings credibility to our business plan.
• We’ll be exhibiting at two trade shows this year (SPIE Defense, Security & Sensing in April, and AUVSI in August).
• We will continue making presentations a priority this year as well. So far, this includes the Space Power Systems Conference, the International Society for Beamed Energy Propulsion (both in April), and the AUVSI Unmanned Systems conference in August, and we have hopes to do more.

As we move forward this year, we look forward to working with our partners, friends and customers as we strive to turn the potential of laser power beaming into commercial reality. Finally, stay tuned to this blog, our Twitter feed or our Facebook page for more frequent updates than we had in 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!

Thursday night was the MIT NW Enterprise Forum’s NW Startup Demo, and LaserMotive was one of six impressive companies that had 8 minutes each to demo their product. We are proud to announce that we “won” as best demo, although it was a very close deal — all of the presenting companies had great demos. Luke Timmerman has a great summary of the evening in his article, “Ultrasound on an iPhone, Wireless Power Beaming, Making Hybrids Sound Like Mustangs: Highlights from the MIT Enterprise Forum.”

LaserMotive has been chosen as one of six companies to present at the Northwest Startup DEMO event run by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest. It will be December 9th at One Union Square in Seattle, and is open to the public (registration required).

UPDATE: @MITForum’s tweet

Below is a video showing the entire twelve and a half hours of laser-powered UAV flight (on a 5-minute battery) demonstrated at the end of October in the Future of Flight Aviation Center, with our partner Ascending Technologies.

Please contact us if you are interested in adding infinite duration wireless power to your UAV!

I want to give huge thanks to Owen Kindig of Ztoryteller not only for making the great video, but for his hard work, dedication, and creativity.

LaserMotive issued a press release on November 3rd: LaserMotive Achieves More Than Half a Dozen Technical Firsts During Its Record Breaking Laser Powered Flight at the Future of Flight Aviation Center. See below for more information.

KENT, WA–(Marketwire – November 3, 2010) – LaserMotive, an R&D company specializing in laser power beaming and winner of the 2009 NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Competition, has additional details on the technical records set during its recent history-making laser-powered flight at the Future of Flight Aviation Center.
The flight, undertaken by LaserMotive and its partner German robotic helicopter manufacturer Ascending Technologies, was the longest laser powered flight on record at 12 hours, 26 minutes and 56.9 seconds. The flight set the following records:

• Longest hovering flight duration for an untethered electric vehicle: Limited only by the venue; the Ascending Technologies Pelican quadrocopter and the LaserMotive power system were both capable of continuing indefinitely
• Endurance record for any VTOL aircraft in this weight class
• Longest beamed-energy-powered flight of any type

In addition, the flight marked the following key milestones towards operational laser-powered UAVs:

• Repeated fully automatic acquisition of UAV by laser tracking system
• In-flight battery recharging
• Automatic position hold in beam, with the laser tracking system controlling the UAV position
• “Class I” operation, meeting US and international laser exposure limits everywhere on the ground

“Today’s flight represents an important achievement for the future of flight,” said Tom Nugent, president and CEO of LaserMotive. “What LaserMotive and Ascending Technologies accomplished today has never been done in the history of flight, and the potential impact is enormous, not only as an endless source of power for air and space craft but for opening up new capabilities for them as well.”

“We are pleased to have been partner in this historic occasion,” said Jan Stumpf, CEO of Ascending Technologies. “LaserMotive’s laser power beaming system has the potential to open up new uses and new markets for unmanned aerial vehicles such as ours, offering new opportunities not only for our company but for the industry as a whole.”

About LaserMotive
Headquartered in Kent, Wash., LaserMotive is a privately-held R&D company specializing in laser power beaming for commercial applications. The company was co-founded in 2006 by Dr. Jordin Kare, one of the foremost experts on laser propulsion, and Tom Nugent, former Research Director for LiftPort Group. Its industry partners include some of the leading companies in aerospace and lasers, including The Boeing Company, DILAS, MS Kennedy, Ophir Spiricon, Zaber Technologies, and In-Tec. For more information on LaserMotive, please visit the company website at www.lasermotive.com.

About Ascending Technologies
Ascending Technologies GmbH is based in Krailling, close to Munich, in Germany. It was founded in 2007 by four engineering students and has revolutionized the flying robotics research by providing unmatched UAVs to R&D groups worldwide. For more information please visit the Ascending Technologies website at www.asctec.de.

LaserMotive issued a press release today:LaserMotive Co-Founders Named Among 2010 Top Innovators of the Year by Seattle Business Magazine.  See below for more information.

KENT, WA–(Marketwire – October 27, 2010) –  LaserMotive, an independent R&D company specializing in laser power beaming and winner of the 2009 NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Competition, announced that Seattle Business Magazine has named its three co-founders — Tom Nugent, Jordin Kare and Dave Bashford — among its Top Innovators of the Year.

The annual awards are given by Seattle Business, a monthly magazine that is read by more than 100,000 business executives across the state, to honor the region’s leading entrepreneurs, inventors and academics.

Nugent, Kare and Bashford were honored for their work in the development of the emerging technology known as laser power beaming — the wireless transfer of energy over distances using laser light — that has the potential to provide a virtually endless supply of power to a variety of applications. This year, LaserMotive set the world record for laser-powered flight with a remote-controlled helicopter that ran continuously up to six hours a day for four days. The system was based on technology the company developed for its winning entry in the 2009 NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Competition for a purse prize of nearly $1 million, marking the first time any team ever won the Competition.

“We’re pleased and delighted to be honored by magazine, which plays an important role in covering the region’s business community,” said Tom Nugent, president and co-founder of LaserMotive.

Headquartered in Kent, Wash., LaserMotive is a privately-held R&D company specializing in laser power beaming for commercial applications. The company was co-founded in 2006 by Dr. Jordin Kare, one of the foremost experts on laser propulsion, and Tom Nugent, former Research Director for LiftPort Group. Its industry partners include some of the leading companies in aerospace and lasers, including The Boeing Company, DILAS, MS Kennedy, Ophir Spiricon, Zaber Technologies, and In-Tec. For more information, please visit the company website at www.lasermotive.com

LaserMotive issued a press release today: LaserMotive to Demonstrate Laser-Powered Helicopter at Future of Flight Aviation Center; Will Mark Longest Duration Untethered Laser Powered Helicopter Flight on Record. In partnership with Ascending Technologies, we will be flying their Pelican quadrocopter via laser power for at least 10 times (and maybe 20 times) the duration possible with batteries alone. See below for more information.

KENT, WA–(Marketwire – October 20, 2010) – LaserMotive, an independent R&D company specializing in laser power beaming and winner of the 2009 NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Competition, today announced it will attempt to break its own world record for laser-powered helicopter flight at the Future of Flight Aviation Center located at 8415 Paine Field Blvd. in Mukilteo, Wash., starting Wednesday, October 27.
The flight, which will consist of an unmanned “quadrocopter” free-flying inside of the Future of Flight Aviation Center, will commence in the early evening on Wednesday, October 27 and will end on Thursday morning by 8:00 AM. The quadrocopter will be powered solely with laser power beaming — the wireless transfer of energy over distances using laser light — to create an endless source of power to the aircraft. Previously, LaserMotive set the world record for the longest-duration laser-powered helicopter flight when it flew a tethered remote-controlled helicopter up to six hours at a time for four days at the AUVSI Conference in Denver, Colo.
“The demonstration will mark our first public display of a free-flying unmanned aerial vehicle powered by lasers, and represents an important step forward in the future development of flight,” Tom Nugent, President and Co-founder of LaserMotive. “As such, we feel that the Future of Flight is the perfect place to hold this groundbreaking demo.”
“We are very pleased to host this record breaking event, which could genuinely impact the future of flight,” said Barry Smith, Executive Director of the Future of Flight Foundation. “For us, the innovation behind the technology is what makes this project so meaningful and we applaud LaserMotive’s achievements as the leader in the field of beamed power.”
The LaserMotive laser power beaming system is based on technology the company developed for its winning entry in the 2009 Power Beaming Challenge for a purse prize of nearly $1 million, marking the first time any team ever won the Challenge. The demonstration is part of the company’s long-term strategy to develop a full-scale laser power system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — currently one of the largest growth sectors in the aerospace and defense industries with an expected growth rate worldwide to $11.5 billion annually by 2020.
Headquartered in Kent, Wash., LaserMotive is a privately-held R&D company specializing in laser power beaming for commercial applications. The company was co-founded in 2006 by Dr. Jordin Kare, one of the foremost experts on laser propulsion, and Tom Nugent, former Research Director for LiftPort Group. Its industry partners include some of the leading companies in aerospace and lasers, including The Boeing Company, DILAS, MS Kennedy, Ophir Spiricon, Zaber Technologies, and In-Tec. For more information, including a white paper on LaserMotive’s UAV strategy, please visit the company website at www.lasermotive.com.
(Note to the media: Media are invited to see the landing of the quadrocopter on Thursday, October 28 starting at 7:30am. Please contact either LaserMotive or the Future of Flight in advance to arrange access).