SBIR-STTR Award

Galley Power is proposing to design, develop and evaluate energy management controllers for battery cycle life and performance optimization on small and medium-size robotic platforms. Galley Power's innovative concepts include 1) an integrated adaptive battery performance and life model; 2) a control framework so that batteries with different performance and cycle life characteristics can be compared and controlled; 3) high efficiency power train to balance the series/parallel BB-2590 batteries without affecting the battery's transient or continuous power delivery performance. This controller will have small form-factor and low power consumption, allowing it to be configurable meet differ robotic platform requirements. Galley Power is also proposing to develop mission profile models to establish the baseline performance evaluation methodology and test protocols to assess the performance improvement of the proposed solution in simulation and measurement. Galley Power also proposes to develop bench top prototypes to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed design.

This Phase II proposal will design, build, and test prototype controllers and their electronics that can optimize the BB-2590 cradle performance for small and medium sized robotic platforms. It will extend the cycle life of BB-2590’s and the robotic mission operation. The algorithm and display will also aid better prediction of life, performance and usable capacity under different mission profiles. The deliverable will include four prototypes for GVR-Bot cradle and two prototypes for CRS(H) cradle to be integrated onto respective robotic platform. Phase I results demonstrated through simulation models that the Galley Power control approach improves lifespan by over 5% and mission time by over 7% for BB-2590 cradles. A unique approach for the energy management approach relies on Galley Power’s power management strategy that requires only portions of a battery’s power to be processed so the solution has very low power overhead. Therefore, the power electronics in the controllers can be high density and low profile. Phase II research will develop these control electronics to be integrated onto GVR-Bot and CRS(H) platforms. The controllers will be tested and compared with the baseline cradles with no controllers to demonstrate the performance improvements meeting existing cradle battery safety requirements.