Ben Waters on the latest wireless charging strategies
Wireless chargers are being deployed in a number of indoor and outdoor applications for charging the mobile robots. | Credit: WiBotic As robot fleets scale, charging becomes an operational challenge. Understanding how to optimize charging for fleets of mobile robots is key to getting the best performance from the fleet throughout the day. Ben Waters, CEO of WiBotic With growing deployments, charging is becoming more than a question of how long a battery lasts or how quickly it can recharge. Char
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As robot fleets grow larger, charging strategy becomes a critical operational challenge that affects fleet uptime, facility infrastructure, maintenance needs, and battery size requirements. Opportunity charging, which positions wireless chargers at locations where robots naturally pause during tasks rather than requiring them to travel to centralized charging stations, is emerging as a key solution for large fleets because wireless charging avoids the maintenance burden that contact-based charging would create at scale. Companies should integrate charging considerations into robot design from the start by planning power infrastructure capacity, carefully determining battery size needs based on actual requirements rather than over-designing, and evaluating fast-charging tradeoffs against long-term battery health. Wireless charging enables robots to remain in their operational loops throughout the day by capturing small charging intervals during task execution, potentially allowing continuous 24/7 operation without dedicated downtime for battery maintenance.
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