Move-and-Charge System for Automatic Guided Vehicles

This paper proposes and implements a new move-and-charge (MAC) system for automatic guided vehicles (AGVs), which not only performs wireless charging, but also automatically navigates the AGV without using guiding sensors. The key is to make use of the dc-dc converter to maintain the equivalent load resistance and then detect the charging current variation to conduct the desired traction under constant ac input current for the rail transmitter. In order to avoid frequent corrections of the forward direction and dc-dc converter regulation, both the straight rail and turning rail conditions are analyzed to determine the threshold value of the charging current. Without any misalignment, its transmission efficiency can reach up to 83% and the traction allowance can achieve up to 30 mm under the transmission distance of 80 mm. Both the finite-element analysis and experimental results are given to verify the validity of the proposed MAC AGV system.