Design considerations about a Photovoltaic Power System to Supply a Mobile Robot

It is desirable that robots would be, as much aspossible, autonomous and self-sufficient. This requires that theycan perform their duties while maintaining enough energy tooperate. This paper presents the preliminary results for thedesign of a power supply system of an autonomous robot.Robot design is divided into four primary areas: energy storage,actuation, power and control. It is obvious that there are manyrelationships among these phases so as matter of fact they haveto be analyzed in parallel to optimize a robot, especially from theenergetic point of view. In particular, a power supply solutionthat utilizes solar cells and a microcontroller have been chosen topower and control an hybrid robot, named TriBot. Finally, initialtests with a probe-loaded robot prototype have demonstrated thefeasibility of the solution