Research And Application On IPT For AGV In Power-Pickup And Guidance

With the development of the industrial automation and the progress of intelligent manufacturing, the Automated Guided Vehicle(AGV), as symbolic flexible transporting equipment, has become quite crucial. Now AGV mainly uses battery for power supply, which suffers the deficiency of operation-time shortage and environment pollution. Inductive Power Transfer(IPT) is a novel method for power supply, realizing long durative operation of the equipment without power-cables. The IPT technology is flexible and reliable, which has promising qualities for development and promotion.In order to improve the performance of the current AGV system, this paper proposes using IPT to combine guidance and power-supply, which can ensure the efficiency of AGV system and reduce unnecessary sensors. The basic principle of an IPT system for AGV has been analyzed, focusing on key issues for guidance and power-supply, putting forward suitable plans for the total research.The design of the pick-up mainly comprises electromagnetic part and circuit. In electromagnetic design, the material and pick-up losses have been identified. Maxwell is used to conduct FEA eddy analysis of the coupling field, to optimize size and position of the magnetic core. In circuit design, a novel ZVS-ZCS circuit has been proposed, mainly describing characteristics of soft-switching circuits, stating the functions of the resonant parameters, and then identifying the specific circuitAs for the electromagnetic guidance, according to the theoretical analysis of the IPT magnetic field, proper arrangement of the sensors is determined; microcontroller devices and signal amplification processing circuits are designed. Through mathematical transformation and analysis, an improved processing algorithm of path deviation is derived, using least-square theory to fulfill data fitment.After the prototypes are made, a series of tests is conducted in the IPT experimental system. The output characteristics and efficiency of the pick-up are verified, so as the detection accuracy of the electromagnetic guidance sensor in several alternating positions. By experiments and improvements, the key parameters of these prototypes have reached the design requirements and practical demands.