Estimating Achievable Range of Ground Robots Operating on Single Battery Discharge for Operational Efficacy Amelioration

Abstract

Mobile robots are increasingly being used to assist with active pursuit and law enforcement. One major limitation for such missions is the resource (battery) allocated to the robot. Factors like nature and agility of evader, terrain over which pursuit is being carried out, plausible traversal velocity and the amount of necessary data to be collected all influence how long the robot can last in the field and how far it can travel. In this paper, we develop an analytical model that analyzes the energy utilization for a variety of components mounted on a robot to estimate the maximum operational range achievable by the robot operating on a single battery discharge. We categorize the major consumers of energy as: 1.) ancillary robotic functions such as computation, communication, sensing etc., and 2.) maneuvering which involves propulsion, steering etc. Both these consumers draw power from the common power source but the achievable range is largely affected by the proportion of power available for maneuvering. For this case study, we performed experiments with real robots on planar and graded surfaces and evaluated the estimation error for each case.

A unified framework for operational range estimation of mobile robots operating on a single discharge to avoid complete immobilization

“…This paper serves as an extension of our preliminary findings (Tiwari et al, 2018). In our prior work, we focused on autonomous ground robots operating in approximately smooth terrains with constant change of gradient but now we extend and generalize our previous model to various robotic platforms operating in natural environmental conditions.…”

ORangE: Operational Range Estimation for Mobile Robot Exploration on a Single Discharge Cycle

“…Empirical results are also presented in support of our model to validate the model fidelity. This work is a brief overview of our findings that were recently published in [11] and [12].…”

“…However, energy carried on-board has to be dispensed for a variety of purposes, including sensing, computation, communications, friction, heating, etc. [11,16] (Fig. 2b).…”

Energy-efficient Path Planning for Ground Robots by Combining Air and Ground Measurements

“…Some prior work uses environment properties to improve path efficiency. The energy consumption of the ground robot can be modeled based on physical laws such as E = mg(µ cos θ + sin θ)l, where µ is the friction coefficient, θ is the inclination angle, and l is the moving distance [10] [1] [11]. Constraints such as impermissible heading due to the ground inclination can also be added [12].…”

“…The problem formulation as presented assumes environments with zero ground inclination angle. We can address terrain geometry in a way similar to the work in [10] [1] by adding an additional cost of G = mg sin θl, (3) when measuring the unit-distance energy cost at a location using Eqn. 1, where mg is the weight of the robot, θ is the inclination angle, and l is the moving distance.…”