Advanced traction rechargeable battery system for cableless mobile robot

Mobile robot often relies on a battery system as its power supply and such kind of mobile robot is called cableless mobile robot. In the past years, while there are many researches on automation and control techniques, mechanical and sensor designs of mobile robot, very little systematic and comprehensive work has been done in the design of rechargeable battery power system for cableless mobile robot. This paper discusses the above problem from three different aspects: selection of rechargeable battery type, battery management technique and energy renewal. In the section on selection of rechargeable battery, many different types of traction rechargeable battery are introduced and the factors that are crucial for cableless mobile robot applications are compared. The section on battery management technique focuses on battery state-of-charge (SOC) estimation. In the section on energy renewal, two typical charging techniques, conductive charging and inductive charging are discussed. In the final section, one implementation example, high power Ni-MH rechargeable battery system for TH-1 humanoid robot which is being developed by Tsinghua University, is introduced.