A Novel High-Frequency Sinusoidal Pulse-Charging Method Based on a Contactless Battery Charger for Mobile Service Robots

This work develops a novel high-frequency sinusoidal pulse-charging method that is based on a contactless battery charger for use in mobile service robots. The focus is on implementing a high-frequency sinusoidal pulse-charging topology with an interleaved rectifier for twin battery banks. Typically, a contactless battery charger with voltage fed inverter uses a resonant tank to transfer power effectively across an air gap. In this work, twin LiFePO4 battery banks with a 12 V supply voltage and 20 Ampere-hour (Ah) storage capacities are used. A prototype of a novel high-frequency sinusoidal pulsecharger that is based on a contactless battery charger is designed for mobile service robots with a 20cm air gap between the transmitting coil and the receiving coil. It is built and tested to confirm theoretical predictions. The twin battery banks are fully charged in 2.3 hours. Experimental results show the satisfactory performance of the proposed battery charging method, which is highly suited to the applications of a battery energy storage system (BESS) for mobile service robots.