Automated robot-based charging system for electric vehicles

Abstract

With the rising number of electric and hybrid vehicles the demand for customerfriendly and innovative solutions for the charging infrastructure is growing steadily. Furthermore, future autonomous driving and parking vehicles are calling for new approaches regarding to battery charging. Nowadays electric vehicles have to be charged by hand. In other words, someone has to connect the charging cable with the charging socket of the vehicle. This paper deals with automated charging systems for electric vehicles. In order to realize tethered charging a fully automated system supports the complete process. The first part of work explains advantages of automated conductive charging systems regarding to other automated concepts and why such systems are needed. The second part deals with an investigation of the state of art. Thereby it is evidenced which systems are already developed and published. Afterwards, challenges and problems behind automated conductive systems are shown. Thereby the individual problems are analysed and illustrated. Finally, an initial concept for automated charging station is presented and discussed as a solution charging multiple and various types of vehicles at public parking facilities.

Robust Adaptive Control of Fully Constrained Cable-Driven Serial Manipulator with Multi-Segment Cables Using Cable Tension Sensor Measurements

“…The charging plug is connected to Link 3 as an end-effector. Hence, the DOF information can be given by Automatic charging robots for electric vehicles are a research field which has emerged in recent years [5,31,32]. Its purpose is to use robots to transform manual process plugging charging plugs into charging ports to an automatic plugging-unplugging operation, as shown in Figure 5.…”

“…This may imply that the negative value of Equation (33) cannot be guaranteed. The term should be chosen to guarantee robustness to the effects of the uncertainty described by Equation (31). Hence, the selection of the robust contribution , which renders less than or equal to zero, is the following work of this proof.…”

Autonomous Charging of Electric Vehicles in Industrial Environment

“…In this context, this publication introduces results of a research project that focused on the development of a fully automated charging robot, using the CCS Type 2 standard interface [16][17][18]. The charging robot consists of a visionbased sensor system, a 6-axis robotic arm including a CCS plug as well as a system control unit.…”

System Design and Optimization of In-Route Wireless Charging Infrastructure for Shared Automated Electric Vehicles

“…The infrastructure cost of the DWPT technology is proportional with the track length. Therefore, minimizing the length of the track embedded in the roadway is considered as a second objective, as given in (6).…”

“…Although conductive charging technology offers a cost-effective and feasible solution [5], it requires a longer charging time, and it is inconvenient for autonomous vehicles since it requires someone to plug in the vehicle, which causes extra labor load in the case of driverless vehicles. These limitations can be avoided by implementing fast chargers with a robot-based plug-in in which an automated arm will plug in the vehicle, instead of needing a human [6], [7]. Even though this seems a logical solution; the conductive charging technology still requires dedicated land or space for charging stations, which is challenging in crowded cities and city districts.…”