Design of Energy Management System for robots working in harsh and hazardous environment

This master thesis addresses the energy management system design for robots operating in harsh and hazardous environment. Intelligent mechatronic solutions aim at minimizing personnel exposition to radiation and maximizing machine uptime, therefore rational energy usage of on-board power supply is crucial to ensure the fulfillment of these goals. Main objectives of the energy management system include possibility of performing reliable forecasts of power consumption, opportunity of monitoring the actual energy usage through battery state of charge and development of tools for planning energy efficient operations. The problem is tackled using sequential approach. First, the power consumption model of robotic arm based on machine learning techniques is developed. Second, different methods to build a power consumption model of the locomotion are studied and the polynomial model is chosen according to established criteria: accuracy, robustness, speed and complexity. Third, the solution of a constrained nonlinear optimization problem of constructing an optimal velocity profile for predefined trajectory length and desired traverse time is presented for trapezoidal and minimum energy velocity profiles. Finally, a method to compute the battery state of charge is proposed. Created algorithms are tested on the robot in the real environment to prove their validity and evaluation of the achieved results is presented. Developed energy management system is implemented in the robot’s hardware and is integrated into the graphical interface of the robotic framework.