The proposed novel railroad energy-harvesting tie is capable of powering various trackside electrical and electronics equipment, including establishing remote charging stations for drones. The energy harvester tie (ETH) uses an electromagnetic generator that is coupled with an efficient motion transmission to convert the movement (kinetic energy) of the track due to passing train wheels into electrical energy in a reliable way. It enables generating power with every passing wheel, in a form and configuration that is robust to the railroad environment and is conspicuous to avoid theft and vandalism. The proposed ETH is able to have large average power output (tens of watts), which is sufficient for powering the vast majority of advanced wayside electrical equipment (such as hot box/bearing detectors, smart digital axle counting systems and wireless communication systems, etc) that the railroads desire to implement to improve safety, and autonomously/wirelessly charging drones to significantly extend their operational range.
