2017/02/01 by Jekan Thangavelautham, Danielle Gallardo, Thangavelautham, Jekan +5
Engineering · #Advanced Battery Technologies Research #Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Technologies #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Fuel Cells and Related Materials #Robotics (cs.RO) #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1702.00325
openalex publication_date 2017/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Mobile robots are often needed for long duration missions. These include search and rescue, sentry, repair, surveillance and entertainment. Current power supply technology limit walking and climbing robots from many such missions. Internal combustion engines have high noise and emit toxic exhaust while rechargeable batteries have low energy densities and high rates of self-discharge. In theory, fuel cells do not have such limitations. In particular Proton Exchange Membrane (PEMs) can provide very high energy densities, are clean and quiet. However, PEM fuel cells are found to be unreliable due to performance degradation. This can be mitigated by protecting the fuel cell in a fuel-cell battery hybrid configuration using filtering electronics that ensure the fuel cell is isolated from electrical noise and a battery to isolate it from power surges. Simulation results are presented for a HOAP 2 humanoid robot that suggests a fuel cell powered hybrid power supply superior to conventional batteries.