Two‐Dimensional Omnidirectional IPT for Robots

Abstract

The IPTS for mobile robots, which has a single wire layer of easily fabricable power floor structure and an evenly displaced multi pick-up structure for receiving uniform power, is explained. Due to its simple structure, a wide area power floor of 3.15 m 2 (1.5 m×2.1 m) could be fabricated as a prototype. Three pick-ups with an evenly displaced angle and space are adopted where the limited bottom area of the free-moving mobile robot is considered. The size and position of each pick-up are appropriately selected for the given subwinding size of the power floor and magnetic pole arrangement. Experiments for the prototype show that the proposed multiple pick-up structure lowers the spatial output power variation and that enough output power of 10 W can be obtained for the mobile robots. This chapter is based on the paper by C. Park, S. Lee, G.-H. Cho, S.-Y. Choi, and C.T. Rim, “Two-dimensional inductive power transfer system for mobile robots using evenly displaced multiple pick-ups,” IEEE Trans. on Industry Applications, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 558–565, January–February 2014.