Novel Autonomous Self-Aligning Wireless Power Transfer for Improving Misalignment

Abstract

A novel autonomous self-aligning wireless power transfer system is proposed to address the issue of misalignment in the stationary wireless charging of electric vehicles. Misalignment between transmitter and receiver is the biggest obstacle in the charging process of wireless charging of electric vehicles that hampered the widescale adoption of this technology. To improve the misalignment performance, a moveable transmitter is proposed, in which the transmitter pad is mounted on a robot. The robot is equipped with a magnetic field sensor located at the center of the circular transmitter pad. Employing the proposed algorithm, the transmitter’s coil mounted on the robot follows the receiver based on measuring the magnetic field. In this case, by having misalignment, the robot moves the transmitter pad to remove misalignment and create alignment. For validating the proposed self-aligning mechanism, an experiment test has been done, and the experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism in aligning the transmitter pad with the receiver pad. The design process and implementation of the robot by considering the transmitter’s coil weight and the required torque to move the transmitter’s coil are detailed.

Keywords

• Coupling coefficient
• inductive power transfer (IPT)
• magnetic field sensor
• misalignment performance
• self-aligning mechanism
• robot