Implementation of Communication Between AGV and Charging Station and Adjustments to the Charging Station Software

Abstract

Seguindo o objetivo de estabelecer um meio de comunicação entre um robô autônomo e sua estação de carga, as opções são estudadas e se é concluido que a melhor opção é fazer a comunicação pelos contatos de carga do robô. O software da estação de carga é alterado para aceitar a comunicação e uma placa de circuito impresso é desenvolvida para possibilitar a comunicação. A velocidade de 100 Mbit/s é alcançada em comunicação unidirecional, o que permite que o robô transmita seus logs à estação de carga dentro do tempo necessário.

Aiming to achieve a communication between robot and charging station of at least 40 Mbps, the project included making the charging station that works free of failures and developing software and hardware for it to allow the robot to send its logs to the charging station, as well as commands and data when necessary and possible. A board capable of holding power-line communication with another of itself has been developed. Thought to have one in the charging station and one in the robot, they allow for a stable communication between the main processor of the robot and the one of the charging station. The power-line is heavily filtered and this effect had to be handled by the module. The final design achieved speeds of about 100 Mbps, which would be more than enough to meet the requirements, but it is expected to achieve even more in better conditions. The time given prevented further testing and improving of the prototype, but even without them, the results were more than satisfactory. Software has been redesigned and developed to meet the requirements and increase scalability.