E-Mobility Engineering 015 l EMotive Scarab off-road truck dossier l In Conversation: Giulio Ornella l Hall effect and magnetic sensors focus l Challenge of batteries for heavy-duty EVs l Alpha Motor Corporation digest l Automated charging insight l HVAC systems focus

an object gets too close. Then the platform immediately stops moving.” A safety stop mechanism has also been developed to detect the presence of a hand between the charging plug and charging port. There are system interface issues as well. Wetzel says, “At the moment, we still have to signal to the robot which car it should charge by opening the charging flap. The goal must be for the vehicle to signal its need for charging to the robot independently or that the driver activates a robot via an app.” Volkswagen has also been working on a prototype of a similar self- driving robot combined with mobile energy storage devices it calls battery wagons. When fully charged, these are each equipped with an energy content of around 25 kWh. One charging robot can move several battery wagons at the same time. When called via an app or V2X comms, the robot brings the energy storage device to the EV and connects them autonomously. With its integrated charging electronics, the energy storage device allows for DC quick charging with up to 50 kW on the vehicle. The robot, which can also drive autonomously, is fitted with cameras, laser scanners and ultrasonic sensors. “Across Austria, there are currently around 8000 publicly available charging stations,” Walzel says. “This is a real stumbling block for the spread of e-mobility – constantly thinking about how far away the next charging station is doesn’t make for a relaxing drive. For this reason, we have to catch up on the charging infrastructure. “A mobile charging robot, for example in multi-storey car parks, on Park & Ride lots or larger business parking areas, can make a significant contribution to this and take away concern about range and charging options,” he says. The project, called CHARbo, used the CHASI robotic platform developed by ARTI Robots. This is a research platform that can be easily extended with sensors such as Lidar for laser ranging and can carry a payload of 80 kg. This is enough to test out various robotic arms and carry a battery that will allow it to service up to 20 vehicles, but not enough to carry a battery pack to charge a vehicle; instead the robot pulls the charging cable with it to plug into a vehicle. This can provide up to 50 kW of power for fast charging. It is controlled by the Robotic Operating System running on a separate PC. The next stage of the project will be to integrate the controller into the robot. Alveri has been working on a version with a simpler robotic arm. “There is currently no robotic arm on the market for this application specifically,” says Brunner. “We therefore used a conventional collaborative industrial robot arm, which allows movement capabilities in a very large radius. “However, we don’t need that much freedom of movement for the charging process, so there is still potential here for less weight and lower costs. The use of such a system only really pays off when a single robot is responsible for several cars and covers a defined area in a parking garage, for example.” In multi-storey car parks, semi- public parking areas at universities, or customer car parks for example, there could in future be a designated parking area for EVs in which charging robots manoeuvre and supply the vehicles parked there. Adaptations in parking architecture might be necessary for this, and legal and safety issues also need to be clarified. Confidence in system safety is also key. “Several safety mechanisms have been implemented in the whole charging robot,” says Konstantin Mautner-Lassnig at ARTI Robots. “The mobile platform uses laser scanners to permanently scan the surroundings for possible obstacles, and detects when The working area here is defined by the area between the two concentric circles (Courtesy of Volterio) 60 Autumn 2022 | E-Mobility Engineering