Omni-directional Inductive Power Transfer System for Mobile Robots Using Evenly Displaced Multiple Pick-ups

The IPTS for mobile robots which has the single wire layer of easily fabricable power floor structure and the evenly displaced multi pick-up structure for receiving uniform power is proposed. Due to its simple structure, a wide area power floor of 3.15 m(2) (1.5 m x 2.1 m) could be fabricated as a proto type. Three pick-ups with evenly displaced angle and space are adopted considering the limited bottom area of the free moving mobile robot. The size and position of each pick-up are optimized for the given sub winding size of the power floor and magnetic pole arrangement. Experiments for the prototype show that the proposed multi pick-up structure lowers the spatial output power variation and that enough output power of 10 W can be obtained for the mobile robots.