Bioinspired Distributed Energy in Robotics and Enabling Technologies
Rudra Mukherjee, Priyanka Ganguly, Ravinder Dahiya
Abstract
On‐board sources of energy are critically needed for autonomous robots to work in unstructured environments for extended periods. Thus far, the power requirement of robots has been met through lead‐acid and Li‐ion batteries and energy harvesters. However, except for a few advances such as light weight, shape, and size, the batteries used in robotics have remained unchanged for several decades, even if the research advances in energy storage have led to devices with flexible form factors. Besides being slow at adopting new energy technologies, robotics also appears to have settled with the idea of centralized energy, as evident from the battery backpack designs of several humanoids. This is in contrast with the biological world, where energy sources are distributed all over the body. Although several attempts have been made to imitate the distributed tactile skin, the energy distribution has strangely not caught attention. With distributed energy, a robotic platform can benefit in terms of increased energy density, lesser design complexities, improved body dynamics, and operational reliability. By focusing on the distributed energy, this first comprehensive review presents the benefits of bioinspired distributed energy in robotics and various energy‐storage and energy‐harvesting technologies that are available or are tuned to attain the same.