Hybrid Fuel Cells Power for Long Duration Robot Missions in Field Environments

TL;DR

This paper explores hybrid fuel cell-battery systems for powering long-duration field robots, demonstrating through simulation that such systems outperform traditional batteries in energy density and reliability.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid fuel cell-battery power supply with filtering electronics to improve fuel cell reliability for mobile robots.

Findings

Simulation shows improved energy density over batteries.

Hybrid system reduces fuel cell degradation.

Enhanced reliability in long-duration missions.

Abstract

Mobile robots are often needed for long duration missions. These include search and rescue, sentry, repair, surveillance and entertainment. Current power supply technology limit walking and climbing robots from many such missions. Internal combustion engines have high noise and emit toxic exhaust while rechargeable batteries have low energy densities and high rates of self-discharge. In theory, fuel cells do not have such limitations. In particular Proton Exchange Membrane (PEMs) can provide very high energy densities, are clean and quiet. However, PEM fuel cells are found to be unreliable due to performance degradation. This can be mitigated by protecting the fuel cell in a fuel-cell battery hybrid configuration using filtering electronics that ensure the fuel cell is isolated from electrical noise and a battery to isolate it from power surges. Simulation results are presented for a HOAP 2 humanoid robot that suggests a fuel cell powered hybrid power supply superior to conventional batteries.