A Method of Power or Signal Transmission

to a Moving Vehicle *
Claude E. Shannon

Abstract
This note describes a circuit for power or signal transmission or both to an object which
may be placed anywhere on a surface in any orientation. The transmission is accomplished
without trailing wires or an overhead trolley system. The circuit may have applications in the
toy field for remotely controlled automobiles, in factories and warehouses for supplying power
to fork lifts and delivery trucks, and in other fields.
The general method has many variants. Perhaps the simplest is shown in Figure I. The
floor is covered with strips of conducting material connected alternately to the plus and minus
of the battery. The vehicle has four brushes rubbing on the floor. Three of these are located at
the vertices of an equilateral triangle, and the fourth is at the center of the triangle.

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BRUSHES

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VeHICLE

flOOR

ric. 1

The altitude of the triangle is made greater than the width of the strips, and less than 1.5 times
this width. In this case it is easily seen that for any orientation of the vehicle, and any position
on the floor, at least one brush is contacting a positive strip and at least one brush contacts a
negative strip. If the triangle altitude is, say, 1.25 times the strip width there is a margin
sufficient to allow for insulating strips between the conducting strips, and to avoid short circuits
when a brush passes from one strip to the next.

Bell Laboratories Memorandum, July 19, 1950.

678

A Method of Power or Signal Transmission to a Moving Vehicle

679

The brushes are connected as shown to eight rectifying elements. These might be, for
example, two selenium bridge rectifiers. It will be seen that there is always a forward path from
plus battery through the rectifiers, motor, and back to minus battery. All direct paths from plus
to minus pass through at least one rectifier in the reverse direction, and therefore do not cause
short circuits.

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rIG. 2

The general scheme can be varied in many ways. In place of alternate strips, the floor can
be made a checkerboard or interlaced triangles, or other patterns (Figure 2). More brushes and
other arrangements of the brushes can be used. Those in Figure 3 give a larger margin for error
in positioning, or aJlow narrower conducting strips on the floor at the cost of more rectifiers.
The width of the conducting strips can be reduced as much as desired by using a sufficiently
large number of brushes. Figure 4 shows a brush arrangement for this. If n brushes are used
equally spaced along the arms of a three-pointed star, the ratio of conducting width to insulating
width can be reduced to about 4 / n. In this case the brushes along an ann can be connected
together to the same rectifier pair over a length of the ann not greater than the spacing d
between conducting segments. Thus as before only eight rectifiers are necessary. In the limit
one obtains a group of four continuous linear brushes and very narrow conducting strips.

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Another possibility is that of going to an array of point contacts on the floor, say at the
comers of a checkerboard, and to use brushes which cover a sizable area. This would reduce
the possibility of accidental short circuits from metal dropped on the floor. The point contacts

680

C. E. Shannon

might even be recessed in the floor and drawn up magneticaJly when needed.

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RECTIfiERS

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It may be noted that AC as well as DC may be used from primary power. The rectifiers
rectify the AC in their operation, so the motor could be a DC motor. When operated on DC,
signalling could be accomplished over the same two-wire circuit by various superimposed AC
frequencies, with separating filters on the vehicle.