This Thiel Fellow thinks he can help scooters, drones and delivery robots charge themselves with sun

guest · Aug 22, 2019

This Thiel Fellow thinks he can help scooters, drones and delivery robots charge themselves with sunlight
August 23, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/t...ivery-robots-charge-themselves-with-sunlight/

From the time he was a high school student, Rohit Kalyanpur thought it was peculiar that although it’s possible to create energy from a solar panel, the panels have long been used almost exclusively on rooftops and as part of industrial-scale solar grids.

“I hadn’t seen [anything solar-powered] in the things people use every day other than calculators and lawn lights,” he tells us from him home in Chicago — though he’s moving to the Bay Area next month.
In fact, Kalyanpur, now 21, was recently given a Thiel Fellowship, a two-year-long program that includes a $100,000 grant to young people who want to build new things, along with a lot of mentorships and key introductions.

He says they can use their existing batteries, too — that the solar won’t just power the devices or vehicles in real time but allow them to store some of that energy, too. Optivolt’s technology “seamlessly integrates into everyday products, so you don’t have to change the product design meaningfully,” he insists.
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This Thiel Fellow thinks he can help scooters, drones and delivery robots charge themselves with sun

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