Center for Embedded Network Sensing

2005 CENS Summer Intern:Autonomous recharging of mobile nodes is crucial to sustaining long-term wireless networks, as well as minimizing the need for human interaction. Charging stations in the field help provide uninterrupted collection of data and decrease human disruption to the area of study. These intelligent charging stations share information and resources both locally and globally to manage multiple power sources among several stations. Charging status is communicated among the stations to optimize the efficiency of the overall system. The charging station design includes multiple methods for station detection, modularity of charging contacts to accommodate different robot platforms, self-healing power management, hermaphroditic linking mechanism, self-correcting mechanical design and various annunciation features. The design was validated against the Ragobot platform.