A smart homecage system with 3D tracking for long-term behavioral experiments

A wirelessly-powered homecage system, called the EnerCage-HC, that is equipped with multi-coil wireless power transfer, closed-loop power control, optical behavioral tracking, and a graphic user interface (GUI) is presented for long-term electrophysiology experiments. The EnerCage-HC system can wirelessly power a mobile unit attached to a small animal subject and also track its behavior in real-time as it is housed inside a standard homecage. The EnerCage-HC system is equipped with one central and four overlapping slanted wire-wound coils (WWCs) with optimal geometries to form 3-and 4-coil power transmission links while operating at 13.56 MHz. Utilizing multi-coil links increases the power transfer efficiency (PTE) compared to conventional 2-coil links and also reduces the number of power amplifiers (PAs) to only one, which significantly reduces the system complexity, cost, and dissipated heat. A Microsoft Kinect installed 90 cm above the homecage localizes the animal position and orientation with 1.6 cm accuracy. An in vivo experiment was conducted on a freely behaving rat by continuously delivering 24 mW to the mobile unit for > 7 hours inside a standard homecage.