IVO
Drones
TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES COME FROM COMPANIES LARGE - AND VERY SMALL By Gene Marrano Groundbreaking technology ideas don’t always come from big labs or big cities. Richard Mansell isn’t an engineer by trade. He’s an associate pastor at a Baptist church in Covington. But he has an aptitude for technology and now his company IVO is working on a new power source that can replace batteries in smaller devices like cell phones and drones. It can augment battery life in electric vehicles via something called CBAT – Capacitive Band Aerial Transmission that uses electrical field pulses, delivered via devices embedded in roadways. He has a ways to go before CBAT is commercially viable but Mansell is excited about the future. Mansell and IVO went through The Gauntlet business program run by The Advancement
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Foundation a few years ago; he now serves as a mentor for other startups that sign on for the annual program, which ends with a Shark Tank-like competition. IVO pays the bills by designing electronic controls; GE and Airbus have been customers in the past. Since he works with drones, Mansell has been able to secure space at the Drone Zone – an old elementary school in Covington that’s been converted into a hub for advancing drone technology. Having such a facility located in the rural Alleghany Highlands city is unusual to say the least. $100,000 in federal funding helped get the Drone Zone off the ground at what
