Development and evaluation of an automatic connection device for electric cars with four DOFs and a control scheme based on infrared markers

Abstract

The topic of electro mobility has become more and more present over the last few years. To increase the acceptance within the population, the continuous expansion of the charging infrastructure is immensely important. In this paper a developed cost efficient charging robot is presented, with only four actively controlled DOFs and an installed low cost camera in the CCS connector. The control scheme is based on using infrared LEDs inside the inlet, which reduce the influence of external light and reflections. The described plugging process includes the pose estimation and pre-positioning, a plausibility and identification check, visual servoing and the plugging/unplugging. Finally, the workspace is examined. Afterwards the developed elastic compensation unit of the robot is analysed for its capabilities to compensate angular deviations. In addition, the reaction forces and torques are measured. In summary in the pluggable workspace a plugging success rate of 97% can be achieved.