This year, CATL deployed its mobile charging, storage and inspection machine, CharGo, in Jiangsu, Shanghai, Hainan and other places. It is reported that this is a product developed by CATL that integrates mobile charging, distributed energy storage and new energy vehicle battery safety monitoring functions. It can not only be used as a "mobile charging station", but also provide additional power support when necessary, and monitor the vehicle battery status in real time.
CharGo charging service allows car owners to make online reservations for charging time and power. When the vehicle arrives at the highway service station, the system will automatically dispatch the charging equipment to the parking space to achieve "stop and charge". Car owners only need to open the charging port to leave the car and rest, and check the charging status in real time through their mobile phones. After completion, the staff will recycle the equipment, and no manual supervision is required throughout the process.
According to the limited public information currently available, the main technologies used by CharGo charging dog include laser radar, RGBD depth of field camera and differential wire control chassis, which cooperate to achieve autonomous navigation positioning, obstacle recognition and obstacle avoidance functions.
In its core technology path, whether ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is used has attracted much attention. CharGo charging dog has not explicitly mentioned the use of UWB, but we can combine the application scenarios of CharGo charging dog and the technical characteristics of UWB to speculate and analyze the potential application points of UWB.
1. Autonomous navigation and positioning function
One of the core functions of CharGo charging dog is "unmanned driving" and autonomous navigation to the vehicle parking place. According to the description, the robot can "reach the vehicle location by itself" after making an online reservation, which requires high-precision positioning and path planning capabilities. Similar mobile robots often use the following technology combinations:
LiDAR or visual SLAM: for environmental perception and obstacle avoidance;
GPS/RTK: outdoor large-scale positioning;
UWB: short-distance high-precision positioning (such as centimeter-level positioning).
It is reported that CharGo charging dog integrates LiDAR, RGBD depth of field camera and SLAM (simultaneous positioning and mapping) algorithm for autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance. We speculate that UWB technology is used as a supplement to positioning capabilities, especially in dynamic environments to enhance reliability.
CharGo charging dog is currently mostly deployed in high-speed service areas, ports and underground garages. In terms of scenarios, in high-speed service areas, UWB DL-TDoA technology can perfectly adapt to the needs of high-speed vehicles by measuring the time difference between signals reaching multiple base stations with its centimeter-level positioning accuracy (static error is only 11.96cm, up to 87.03cm in dynamic scenarios), and make up for the failure of traditional satellite signals in tunnels.
In obstructed environments such as underground garages, GPS/Beidou signals are severely attenuated. With its anti-interference ability and centimeter-level accuracy, UWB can be combined with SLAM to achieve more comprehensive environmental perception, helping CharGo charging dogs to achieve autonomous navigation, and is an ideal indoor positioning solution.
2.Dynamic obstacle avoidance and path planning
Parking lots are mixed with people and vehicles, and obstacles need to be perceived in real time and the path needs to be adjusted dynamically to achieve dynamic obstacle avoidance. The high reliability and low latency characteristics of UWB technology enable robots to achieve accurate obstacle avoidance and navigation in complex environments, reducing the risk of accidents.
Using the Time of Flight (ToF) ranging method, UWB can achieve accurate ranging, allowing robots to perceive the distance and position of obstacles in front in advance, so as to adopt appropriate obstacle avoidance strategies. This active obstacle avoidance method not only improves charging efficiency, but also greatly reduces the risk of collision, protecting the safety of the car and the robot itself.
In addition, in order to improve charging efficiency, the parking position of the robot needs to be reasonably docked according to specific scene requirements. By deploying and implementing the UWB positioning solution, the robot can be path planned and the real-time location information can be used to optimize robot management. According to the principle of proximity and the principle of reuse of idle robots, path optimization and balanced optimization of robot operations are achieved.
3.The car search function is limited by vehicle compatibility
Combined with the official description, it is speculated that CharGo charging dog navigates to the parking place of the vehicle by itself, which is achieved by visual recognition of the license plate number by the camera, but it also leaves room for imagination for UWB car search.
UWB's high-precision positioning requires both devices (charging dog and vehicle) to be equipped with UWB modules to achieve ranging or positioning through signal interaction. However, at this stage, most vehicles on the market are not equipped with UWB modules. If they rely on vehicle-side UWB tags for positioning, car companies need to cooperate to upgrade hardware, but it will be difficult to popularize in the short term.
At the same time, even if some high-end models are equipped with UWB, the differences in UWB protocols of different manufacturers will lead to compatibility issues. For example, UWB base stations may not be able to communicate with car companies' private protocols, forming a technical island.
As a global vehicle standardized logo, the license plate is naturally adapted to visual recognition technology and has obvious advantages. CharGo charging dog uses RGBD camera + AI algorithm to achieve a license plate recognition rate with a low error value under complex lighting and occlusion conditions, without the need for vehicle-side cooperation.
However, we can still expect that if the UWB module on the vehicle side becomes popular in the future (such as the promotion of V2X vehicle-road collaboration), robots such as CharGo charging dogs can be upgraded to realize functions such as non-sensing wake-up (when the vehicle enters the parking lot, UWB automatically triggers the charging dog to standby), reverse positioning (the charging dog reversely locks the position through the vehicle UWB signal to reduce the visual scanning range), etc., to further enhance the user charging experience.
4.New application scenarios of UWB
From the technical feasibility point of view, to achieve indoor UWB positioning, it is necessary to pre-deploy UWB anchor points (base stations) to form a positioning network; and on the commercialization path, the deployment of UWB base stations will increase hardware and operation and maintenance costs, and must be compatible with existing facilities in the parking lot, which is a typical B2B2C model.
The application of UWB in the field of charging robots is still in its early stages, and its popularization depends on cost reduction and cross-industry ecological collaboration. If CATL chooses the UWB solution, it may share costs through B-side cooperation, such as cooperating with local governments or transportation operators to incorporate UWB base stations into smart city infrastructure (such as smart street lights and traffic signal systems), which can further dilute deployment costs and form an ecological closed loop of "charging robots + UWB positioning network". Rather than directly targeting C-end users.
In the short term, UWB is still limited to high-end scenarios, and charging robots may be deployed in scenarios such as commercial complexes and highway hubs as a differentiated selling point; in the long run, support for high-precision positioning technology in fields such as smart transportation and new infrastructure may accelerate the public infrastructure of UWB base stations. With the improvement of smart city infrastructure, UWB may become a standard feature of parking lots, promote the full popularization of charging robots, and reserve technical interfaces for future car-pile-road collaboration.
When smart connected vehicles are generally equipped with UWB modules, charging robots can directly achieve sub-meter reverse positioning through vehicle signals, and build a fully automatic charging network of "demand perception-resource scheduling-service execution", which will become the key technical foundation of smart city energy systems.
This paper is from Ulink Media, Shenzhen, China, the organizer of IOTE EXPO (IoT Expo in China)
