Multiphase Pickups for Large Lateral Tolerance Contactless Power-Transfer Systems

The majority of commercial contactless power-transfer systems used in manufacturing applications can only tolerate limited movement of the power pickup relative to the track to which it is magnetically coupled. This paper describes a new multiphase (quadrature) pickup that significantly improves the tolerance of the power receiver to such relative movement, enabling expanded applications such as continuously powered automatic guided vehicles, robots, and other vehicles to be considered. The advantage gained is largely independent of the track type, so that single-phase or multiphase tracks can be used as desired to improve both the power transfer and lateral tolerance as required. The improvement is achieved by capturing both vertical and horizontal components of magnetic flux around any track.