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ENERGY AND POWER SYSTEMS 6

The power systems of a robot are central to its health, reliability, and effectiveness. The
power systems include all the elements of the robot that work together to generate, use,
and conserve power. It is very difficult to control the power profile of a robot. It’s crit-
ical that the design team starts early on a plan for power control. Further, it’s critical that
one engineer be in charge of the effort. Ideally, if a computer is involved, give the task
to the engineer that can control the power-saving features of the computer processor
itself. Every component of the robot, down to the last nut and bolt, affects the power
consumption. We’ll get into just why that is the case later.
For the moment, let’s take a big step back and perform a mental exercise. Imagine the
robot we want to build. Visualize its form, shape, and mass. Now let’s take off our col-
lective eyeglasses and view the robot as a big, fuzzy hunk of metal and plastic. It’s just
a mass of material, portions of which may move from place to place. Will it have enough
fuel to get where it’s going and to perform its task? With a battery-powered robot, this
is a critical question. Viewing the robot as a single mass makes it easier to make sense
out of the preliminary energy calculations.

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