Energy-Aware Actuators

MSc assignment

Traditionally, electric motors are powered by a battery or other power source. In some cases, a motor+controller supports regenerative braking, so that energy flows back from the motor to the battery or maybe indirectly to another motor. A motor with a flywheel could then be considered as an alternative power source for the common power line.

In this assignment we would like to go one step further: instead of using one fixed power supply line, we aim to make a reconfigurable power grid in which multiple DC motors, a battery, a supercapacitor, a DC-DC booster and possibly additional components can be dynamically connected together (somewhat like a FPGA). A logic controller (e.g. Arduino Due) then configures the power grid according to the given task. Such a task could e.g. be the transfer of an amount of kinetic energy of one motor to another motor (and back) without the need for a physical connection to a battery or common power line.