[goaty]

So electrical transformers take a lot of amps, and converts it to volts and back again.

So a wind transformer would have a big inlet,  and a small outlet, and the slow wind comes in, turns into a jet out of a little hole out the back.

Because a little hole has a lot of resistance to it,  it wouldn't want to come out of the hole that much, most of it deflects away.    But I think it is possible, nothing gained nothing lossed, with a hierarchical connection of pumps, the initial level pumped by the air coming into the mouth/scoop.

I think this would beat the windfarms they have today, if you got it to work, and it also would be portable, because its just diodes and capacitors you could shake it around and it pretty much wouldn't disturb it at all,  unlike other methods, so possibly you could run a robot with it, powered by the passive wind around it.

The air would literally go straight to its muscles, to be used straight away.

If it were an army of drones, like an ant hive, you could tell who the warrior ants were, because they would have bigger scoops ontop, for more muscle power.



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[AndyGoode]

But I think it is possible, nothing gained nothing lossed, with a hierarchical connection of pumps, the initial level pumped by the air coming into the mouth/scoop.

It sounds like you are trying to figure out a way to power a robot continually, especially out in the wild, without the need for electrical connections or stored fuel. Is that your goal? What's wrong with solar power, which is much more common?

I don't understand your comment about pumps. What is being pumped? Air? It sounds like you have electronics (diodes and capacitors) in the robot that must be powered, so it sounds like you want to transduce mechanical motion (wind) into electricity. Another way to do that would be to cover the robot with small appendages that can be easily blown around, like hairs or feathers, and at the base of each hair/feather, have a tiny magnet that moves and produces electricity from its motion.

[goaty]

Your idea sounds good.

I was thinking a scoop full of little wind daisies,  that pump a little tiny bit of air,  then it connects to one pump at the end for the high pressure (air/water pumps can be put in series for more psi) you need for charging a battery.

Its very much like solar power,  even in solar power you put the panel in series to build up the voltage to go into your capacitor/battery,  but its just wind filling up an air tank instead.

There is equivalent diodes and capacitors in pneumatics,  exchange capacitor for tank, and  diode for check-valve,  but ball diodes aren't the best, hinge diodes kick their butt I think.

If it were a flying creature,  then it would charge a lot better after it took off, because all the wind is upstairs,  it doesn't get close to ground as much.
I wonder if you could motivate a genetic algorithm to adopt an unsupervised strategy which scooped up more air, in how it flew around.

[goaty]

absolute genius...