Low-power Energy Management Module for Ambiently Powered Robotic Swarms
Mohmmadsadegh Mokhtari, Parham Haji Ali Mohamadi, Dragan Subotic, Ritesh Kumar Singh,
Bram Vanderborght, Maarten Weyn, Jeroen Famaey
IEEE HONET 2024, 3-5 December 2024, Doha, Qata
Abstract:
This paper presents an Energy Management Module
(EMM) designed for low-power ambiently powered robotic
swarms that harvest energy from the environment in addition
to the conventional charging methods. The EMM is designed to
cooperate with a scheduling architecture that coordinates tasks
across the Ambiently Powered Swarm Robots. This module helps
the scheduler to have more flexible control over the robot’s energy
storage and consumption. Key functionalities of the proposed
EMM include real-time monitoring of energy level, low-power
schedulable idle period, monitoring of efficient energy harvesting
mechanisms, dead-battery robot recovery, and providing hard reset
ability of the robots. The module provides an extra low-power
wireless connection to the robots. In collaboration with the EMM,
the scheduler manages energy consumption across the swarm and
prevents individual robots from exhausting their energy reserves
in idle periods, dead battery mode, and malfunctioning. To
validate the effectiveness of the EMM, experiments are conducted
in both simulated and real-world environments, demonstrating
improvements in mission endurance, task completion rates, and
overall swarm performance. Results indicate that the EMM
effectively extends mission duration and enhances operational
efficiency compared to baseline approaches.
Index Terms—Energy Management Module, Ambiently Powered
Robot Swarm, Energy-Aware Scheduling, Robot Recovery