Automated Li-Ion Battery Discharging

Introduction: 

The use of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) has increased strongly during the last years and further strong growth is expected, mainly driven by electrical vehicles (EV, PHEV and HEV (xEV)) on the short term, and stationary and marine applications on the longer term. LIBs have a long lifetime, in many cases above ten years, but eventually the batteries will reach end of life. Proper recycling is then required. With the current state-of-the-art, one of the most manual labour-intensive steps, when recycling LIB, is to dismantle each battery to modules, before applying mechanical and metallurgical processes. With the strong volume increase expected in 7-10 years, a fully automated process will be required. The proposed B.Sc. or M.Sc project will contribute to solve this challenge as it is a part of the current EU research project RHINOCEROS (Batteries reuse and direct production of high performances cathodic and anodic materials and other raw materials from batteries recycling using low cost and environmentally friendly technologies) coordinated by TECNALIA within EU Horizon Europe Program. RHINOCEROS will demonstrate a smart sorting and dismantling robotic system at TRL 6, enabling the automation of a battery repurposing production line. Main international partners associated with the work package about battery sorting are Watt4Ever and Ford. Student will have the opportunity to collaborate with the industrial partners through workshops, seminar, or meetings related to their project tasks.

Description

The main goal of this project is to provide automated robotized solution based on Universal Robot, 3D-camera, and mobile platform capable of discharging battery packs and/or modules of an electric vehicle. The first objective is to find, identify, and localize the connection terminals of various EV battery packs and modules. The second objective of this project is to design and implement a robotic tool connected to the robot arm together with a connection system to electrically connect all the cables from a discharging station to the different modules. Continuous monitoring of temperature, voltage and current is also required.  The Computer Vision System design includes the state-of the art analysis and a selection of appropriate algorithms in OpenCV library. Suggested software used in the project is Python or C++. The entire system will be operated using ROS software running on PC and connected to industrial controller and vision system. A path planning must be implemented in ROS using existing algorithms (MoveIt! toolbox). The work breakdown for this project is listed below.

·       Develop a Computer Vision System

·       Compare several identification algorithms suitable for detection, localization and sizing of the terminals and cables to be connected. 

·       Connect/disconnect discharging system to module terminals by developing a new tool that will be connected to one Universal robot. (Main focus of this project) 

·       Monitor temperature, hotspots, voltage, current.

·       Integrate UR5 or UR10 + force sensor + tool

Available equipment: UR5 or UR10 robot, ZIVID 3D camera, force sensor, temperature scanner, PC, battery module

Software: Ubuntu, ROS (C++, Python)