Graphics enhanced version of this site

Power Sources for Small Robots
K. Dowling
tech. report CMU-RI-TR-97-02, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, January, 1997.

Jump to: Download | Abstract | Notes | Text Reference | BibTeX Reference

Adobe portable document format (pdf) [89 KB]
Compressed postscript (ps.gz) [88 KB]

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

This report is a discussion, evaluation and comparison of potential sources of electrical power for small mobile systems. Power sources are an inevitable challenge in the design of portable and small mobile systems, especially robotic systems. Power systems cannot be an afterthought and, if left to final design stages, can result in severe and adverse effects on the system, such as excess weight, size, heat and operational limitations. Power system alternatives investigated include batteries, fuel cells and generators, thermoelectric generators, supercapacitors, flywheels and even non-storage options such as tethers. This report presents general principles and provides a means to compare and evaluate different technologies for their particular application. In particular, comparisons are provided in the context of Ragone diagrams to illustrate the capabilities of the different technologies.

Sponsor: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, MITI Real World Computing Partnership, NASA
Grant ID: #60NANB5H0032

Number of pages: 35

K. Dowling, Power Sources for Small Robots, tech. report CMU-RI-TR-97-02, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, January, 1997.

@techreport{Dowling_1997_438,
   author = "Kevin Dowling",
   title = "Power Sources for Small Robots",
   institution = "Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University",
   month = "January",
   year = "1997",
   number = "CMU-RI-TR-97-02",
   address = "Pittsburgh, PA"
}