Inductive Power Transfer Solutions – Floor

For floor conveyors, the goal is to achieve a level floor with no obstructions for people, forklifts, or other equipment in the factory environment, eliminate dangerous contact rails, and make batteries in vehicles either unnecessary or more efficient. To achieve this, the primary track is installed in the floor or other surface along the travel path. The inductive power transfer solutions can be installed continuously along the entire travel path or only in defined areas when on-board energy storage is available. The advantage of continuous power transfer is that it eliminates the need for on-board energy storage devices. This reduces maintenance and battery replacement costs, and often requires fewer vehicles, since none are typically off-line for recharging. Vehicles with their own on-board power source are preferable when there are long, infrequently traveled routes, or when there are very complex or variable routes that make burying cables in the ground impractical. Using inductive charging paths in this way has the beneficial effect of allowing opportunity charging while traveling or at idle. Optionally, it is possible to precisely guide vehicles along the magnetic field created by the power transfer to give them position information via position marks.

When it comes to floor-operated material handling and logistics, you want to avoid the obstructions, high maintenance, and vulnerable contact surfaces of the past. You want easy cleaning, no safety issues, low maintenance, no worries. Inductive power transfer solutions provide just that. You don't see it, you don't notice it, but it provides the power to move the vehicles and that is how Inductive Power Transfer Solutions make a difference.

When powering floor-operated vehicles, continuous inductive power is typically required along the entire travel path. The primary track of the Inductive Power Transfer Solutions is installed along the travel path. Alternatively, hybrid systems may be an option where power is transferred only in certain segments along the travel path. This, of course, requires some form of energy storage on board the vehicle. The advantage of such hybrid systems is that they can simplify cable routing and installation in certain types of installations, but the disadvantage is that additional on-board energy storage is mandatory. Since additional on-board energy storage means additional investment, adds complexity to the vehicles, requires maintenance and is part of the wear and tear, continuous power supply is normally the way to go and thus the most chosen type of installation.

The pickups and controllers are mounted on the vehicles. As with all continuous inductive power transfer solutions, the transfers are made using the dual cable model, i.e. with a forward and return cable. To simplify the implementation in vehicles, AGV's integrated solutions are the best approach. Integrated means a compact flat pickup (F-Pickup), no additional wiring on the vehicle side between pickups and controllers.

If one F-Pickup is not sufficient to provide the required power level, it is possible to combine them to provide higher power levels together. The design of the F-Pickups ensures a level power supply.

The standard output voltage is 560V DC. 560 V DC is the DC equivalent of a 400 V AC supply. Typically, inductive power transfer systems supply power to variable speed drives or mobile controllers with integrated variable speed drives. Standard frequency inverters have an input rectifier that converts the normally supplied AC supply voltage to DC, and the variable frequencies to control drives are then applied in a second stage. Since it does not make technical sense to design inductive power transfer solutions that provide AC outputs that are immediately rectified back to DC, regulators provide DC outputs that are fed either into the phase inputs or, if necessary, directly into the DC bus of the drive.

The shape of the F-Pickups is the part of Inductive Power Transfer Solutions that is application oriented. Clustering of similar applications is usually applied, so whenever elevated cable mounting is not possible, F-Pickups are the choice. The 2-wire track layout optimizes EMC characteristics and field effects, accumulating the field in the center and eliminating field propagation to the surroundings outside the envelope intended for the power transfer quickly. Fewer components means less complexity, reduces volume, saves resources, saves cost, increases efficiency. Every power conversion ultimately creates losses. These are avoided in the chosen design. So we have both economic and ecological wins.