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).

The final 12 entrants in NWEN’s First Look Forum gave their 5 minute pitches to a packed room of investors Tuesday afternoon in downtown Seattle. LaserMotive was ninth in the line-up, and things went very well (no matter how Tom felt). The audience then voted for their top choices, and LaserMotive was one of the final 5. We later found out that LaserMotive was the audience favorite “by a wide margin” although this was not officially announced. These five companies then had one more minute to talk about one additional slide, followed by questions from three judges. Those judges then chose the winner and runner-up. LaserMotive is proud to have been chosen as runner-up from amongst a field of a dozen well-presented companies! In addition to the sponsored prizes, this honor will help as we start raising money from outside investors.

We want to give a big thanks not only to the judges and audience members who voted for us, but also to Rebecca Lovell and Caitlin Goetze of NWEN for all their support, and to our coaches throughout the process!

NWEN has chosen the 12 finalists for their First Look Forum. LaserMotive is in this group, and will be presenting on October 12th. If our laser-powered helicopter demo works well when we present at the CleanTech Open regional semi-finals on October 4th, we’ll likely bring it with us to the FLF.

The Northwest Entrepreneur Network hosts a First Look Forum (FLF) twice a year to expose new and promising start-ups to the venture investment community around the Pacific Northwest.
We are proud to announce that LaserMotive made the cut to the top 20 applicants for the current FLF. We are now working to make the next cut to the top 12 later this month, at which point we will participate in the First Look Forum on October 12th. To find out more, check out the First Look Forum page.