Ford patent depicts drones jump-starting cars with flat batteries

Drones are being used to inspect structures, deliver lunches, shuttle transplant organs, rush defibrillators to cardiac victims, and capture incredible first-person footage to thrill and entertain. Now the Ford Motor Company is looking to expand that list of UAV applications by cutting the waiting time for drivers with flat car batteries needing a jump start.

According to a patent application published Tuesday, Ford has created a scheme through which drivers stranded by spent batteries could be bailed out by drones providing a jump start. Of course, yanking a set of jumper cables out of the trunk and asking a helpful passing driver to resolve the problem would be faster and easier. But with most motorists forswearing that gear as too clutter-prone – and the selfless assistance of other people becoming an endangered quality – Ford is looking at an aerial alternative to the predicament.

Read: Apple receives drone controller connectivity patent

Initially spotted by specialist site Ford Authority, the patent dates back to 2017, but was only published this week. It describes a series of scenarios under which drivers of future Ford vehicles would call in a request for assistance, and wait for drones to speed their way to provide charges from their own batteries to get the stalled car started. The somewhat administratese language of the filing describes the idea this way:

“Disclosed herein is a system including a computer programmed to actuate a plurality of drones to first establish one or more electrical connections therebetween and then to provide a jump start to a vehicle.”

The Ford patent says that drones might also be used to transport a relatively device to jump-start the car – say, a power bank – but notes the charges those pack aren’t always reliable in getting a stalled vehicle running again. That begs the question of how notoriously limited batteries in UAVs will do the job, which Ford seems to answer by using the cells of numerous craft at once.

In what some minds may find as possibly kinky language, the Ford filing describes one use case involving the “assigning a master drone and a slave drone from among the plurality of drones” that then carry out a hierarchy of duties to connect to the flat car battery. It also considers different kinds of accessories connecting the UAVs to provide a serial charge sufficient to jump start a vehicle. 

Illustrations in the patent filing also depict drones fitted with triad-like fixtures at the end of extended arms to facilitate gaining access and hooking up to the dead battery. 

The aerial jump-starting solution is just one of the many ways Ford has been looking to incorporate drones into the operation of its cars. Those include creating hidden nests containing drones in the roofs of trucks, and using large transport vans as hubs for internal fleets of UAVs providing last-mile delivery service to households in the surrounding area.

Read more: Ford plans last-mile delivery drones docking in cargo trucks

The new scheme is a twist in that thinking by using externally located drones operated by central computer system to serve as fast-travelling, automated aerial versions of AAA tow trucks.