Estimating Achievable Range of Ground Robots Operating on Single Battery Discharge for Operational Efficacy Amelioration
This work addresses a critical limitation for mobile robots used in law enforcement by improving operational efficacy through better range estimation, but it is incremental as it builds on existing energy modeling approaches.
The paper tackled the problem of estimating the maximum operational range of ground robots on a single battery discharge by developing an analytical model that analyzes energy utilization for components like computation and maneuvering, and they performed experiments on planar and graded surfaces to evaluate estimation errors.
Mobile robots are increasingly being used to assist with active pursuit and law enforcement. One major limitation for such missions is the resource (battery) allocated to the robot. Factors like nature and agility of evader, terrain over which pursuit is being carried out, plausible traversal velocity and the amount of necessary data to be collected all influence how long the robot can last in the field and how far it can travel. In this paper, we develop an analytical model that analyzes the energy utilization for a variety of components mounted on a robot to estimate the maximum operational range achievable by the robot operating on a single battery discharge. We categorize the major consumers of energy as: 1.) ancillary robotic functions such as computation, communication, sensing etc., and 2.) maneuvering which involves propulsion, steering etc. Both these consumers draw power from the common power source but the achievable range is largely affected by the proportion of power available for maneuvering. For this case study, we performed experiments with real robots on planar and graded surfaces and evaluated the estimation error for each case.