Power and propulsion systems design for an autonomous omni-directional mobile robot

Abstract

In this paper power and propulsion systems design for an autonomous omni-directional mobile robot which is developed for RoboCup compaction, is presented. For robot energy storage unit, lithium ion polymer battery is chosen because of its high power and energy densities, and a protection circuit against deep battery discharge was designed for it. Because the power flow between energy storage units and motors and also speeds of motors have to be controlled at the same time, we proposed a two cascaded cell modules consisting motor speed control and power flow control modules. The other parts of our robot power system are dc-dc converters and kicker circuit. The simulation and experimental results show proposed scheme is valid and energy management and speed control can be achieved properly using this method. The filed experiments show robot mobility functions to perform the requested motion is enough and it has a high maneuverability in the field.