Ultra-compact solution for wireless charging

Wireless charging is on the rise. More and more consumers are using it to charge their smartphones, but organizations and companies are also using it to power autonomous electric vehicles and robots. On the one hand because of the convenience - you no longer need cables. On the other, mainly because wireless charging offers significant efficiency advantages and is safer than known charging methods.  

Numerous industries today use autonomous electric vehicles such as AGVs (automated guided vehicles), AMRs (autonomous mobile robots), warehouse shuttles, cleaning robots, disinfection robots and drones. In many organizations, people charge these electric vehicles manually. One removes the battery from the vehicle and manually connects it to the charger. Some companies have already eliminated the need for human intervention. There, vehicles drive autonomously to a charging station to connect to the grid and charge themselves. The second option is obviously more convenient because no one has to do anything anymore. Still, charging the battery still takes 6 to 8 hours. That means those vehicles are sometimes idling up to a third of the time. For 24-hour environments such as e-commerce warehouses, autonomous safety robots and the like, this is a problem.

The future is wireless

Buzzard offers a concrete solution here with wireless charging. After all, that enables in-process charging or "opportunity charging. How this works? Every hour, the vehicle autonomously drives to its charging station, charges the battery for a few minutes and then goes back to work. Instead of hours at a stretch, the vehicle charges for only a few minutes every hour. That way, you can deploy it 24/7 and maximize efficiency. 

Additional benefits of induction drawers

In addition to a 30% performance gain and the elimination of cables, wireless charging brings many other benefits. 

- No human intervention
Since buzzard recharges itself, no one wastes time with few valuable activities such as plugging in a cable, changing a battery, pressing a button or performing a visual check. It also eliminates the possibility of human error. 

- Maintenance-free solution
During charging, the vehicle positions itself a few centimeters from the charging station. Thus, no contact takes place at all. Moreover, buzzard contains no rotating parts such as a fan that can break down. That means wireless charging is free of wear and tear and does not require periodic maintenance. 

How does wireless inductive charging work?

The buzzard charging system contains induction coils that convert electricity into a magnetic field. 5 to 10% of energy is lost in the conversion and transfer of the current, resulting in an efficiency of 90 to 95%.

Applications

Thanks to its many advantages, wireless inductive charging is becoming the standard for industrial electric vehicles. Today, buzzard is used, among other things, in situations where uptime is crucial and the time available to charge offline is limited, for example, in 24-hour warehouses and factories. The system is suitable for situations where vehicles need to recharge through frequent charging sessions over short time intervals. And buzzard is also appropriate for projects and environments where contact-based charging is not allowed due to safety risks or where environmental factors are not suitable for charging via older technologies.

Ghent's top technology

Buzzard is a solution from Multipowr, a technology company specializing in wireless charging solutions for automated applications in industrial electric vehicles, such as AGVs. 

Founded in 2022, the company builds on 20 years of research in developing state-of-the-art charging solutions. To do so, it relies on a highly skilled technical team with decades of experience in wireless charging and a proven technology that has overcome all growth-related challenges. Customers choose Multipowr because it is a reliable and experienced player that is fully committed to innovation to adapt to the fast-changing demands of the industry. To this end, it has a rapid prototyping workshop in Ghent and its own production facilities in Central Europe. ■