The proposed battery charging systems above need
mechanical and electrical connections between the charging
station and the battery. The docking process also needs high
precision. With the development of wireless charging
technology, wireless charging becomes a feasible solution for
charging of portable electronic devices [22], [23], wireless
sensor network nodes [24], [25], and electric vehicles [26],
[27]. A contactless charging platform [28] can be used to
charge multiple robots simultaneously. The batteries of the
robots finish charging in about 3 hours.
Wireless battery charging allows the robot to plug the dead
battery into the charger on the charging station within a larger
docking range and does not need a tight connection between
the charging station and the battery. In this paper, the design
and implementation of a battery swapping and wireless
charging robot system are presented for home automation
applications. A six degree-of-freedom manipulator is mounted
on a four-wheeled robot base. The manipulator can grasp and