Automatic Charging of Electric Driverless Vehicles with Robotic Arm

Abstract

Autonomous devices are used in many industries such as military, space, health and agriculture. With the development of driverless vehicle technology, it is expected that the transportation sector will be included in this field in the future, and one of the problems it will bring with it will be to get the vehicle ready to go as quickly as possible. Nowadays, new methods are being developed for charging electric vehicles and one of these methods is to perform charging with cable connection using robotic systems. Today, companies such as Tesla and Volkswagen have made great progress in this regard, but the development of this technology dates back to years ago, and the data received from various pressure sensors and proximity sensors and image processing methods have been used together. In this study, the charging process was tried to be performed using only image processing methods, without the need for an additional sensor. In the study, QR code technology was used and the operations were performed by bringing the central point and width of the QR code to the specified value range. In the study, the effect of the structure of the robot arm and the actuators used greatly affect the performance of the system. The charging process started in 4 minutes for the closest location, and 12 minutes at the farthest location. With more sensitive actuators and a mechanically better designed robotic arm, these times are estimated to be reduced by 4 times.