Safe as robots – battery management explained

Power is nothing without control. This is true of batteries in robots as it is anywhere else. To keep your warehouse safe and working at all times, the stored energy within your AMR’s batteries needs to be properly contained and correctly controlled.

To make your warehouse as safe as possible, Wise Robotics and Hikrobot selected lithium iron phosphate batteries, aka LiFePO4 batteries. These offer the perfect balance of maximum efficiency and minimal risk, avoiding problems of overheating, combustion, and hazardous materials. To make these dangers even more distant, our AMRs feature a range of expertly engineered containment and control systems. All to keep your warehouse working, and give you full confidence in the future of your industry 4.0 operation.

Armoured activities

Even though all the other elements of LiFePO4 batteries make them extremely safe in the event of a catastrophe, prevention is always much better than cure. Among the very best ways to keep a battery system safe is to make sure that it can’t be damaged in the first place. To ensure that it can resist every possible type of damage that could compromise its integrity and lead to serious amounts of damage. That’s why the Q and F series of robots feature the most robust and resilient casing and packing systems imaginable.

Here are some of the many safety tests that the LiFePO4 battery packs used by Wise Robotics have passed with absolutely flying colours

• Full inversion test (AKA flip test)
• Extreme vibration test (AKA shake test)
• Sudden impact test (AKA shock test)
• Freefall robustness test (AKA drop test)
• Temperature shock test (AKA fireblast test)

The battery pack casing is past robust, beyond reliable, and surpasses safe. It keeps the battery contained exactly where it should be, in exactly the state it needs to be. Intact and online.

Full failsafe features

If the batteries themselves weren’t strong and secure enough to satisfy every possible safety concern, the software behind the scenes takes your protection one step further. There are three key components to the digital infrastructure that keeps your robots in check and your warehouse safe.

The BMS – Battery Management System – The BMS is the onboard brain of the robot’s battery system. It contains sensors that track every aspect of the battery’s onboard operations. From the slightest suggestion of overcharge to the tiniest fluctuation in temperature. All this data is monitored and collected within the BMS, which can then make decisions about the individual robot’s operations. If it observes that something is wrong, the BMS can instruct the robot to do everything from shift direction, change destination, or even shut down completely. Every robot contains a BMS to keep its own independent operations 100% safe.

The RCS – Robotic Control System – What the BMS does for the individual robots, the RCS works out for the entire warehouse. It can keep track of all the information coming in from every individual robot’s BMS, allowing for more intelligent system-wide decisions that can keep your factory as a whole safe. The same system that is keeping your warehouse as efficient as possible is keeping every last employee as safe as possible. It does this by working with the capstone of Wise Robotic’s pyramid of protection.

The AMS – Alarm Management System – The AMS takes information delivered by the BCS to the RCS and ensures it is heard by the most important part of this equation. Warehouse employees. The relevant workflows are warned and vital alerts get activated. Specific safety procedures take effect and all possible protections are deployed.

Discover Wise Robotics safety systems

The software and hardware that make our AMR’s so robust is a cornerstone reason behind why you should choose Wise Robotics as your warehouse automation partner. These well-armoured power packs and sophisticated digital defences, combined with advanced anti-collision systems and the highly stable battery composition, makes it clear why flexible robotics represent a radical change for warehouse automation.

If you’d like to learn more, come and see for yourself. Wise Robotics owns and operates Europe’s first flexible automation demonstration centre. You can watch what happens when industry 4.0 goes live, and discover why the robotics revolution isn’t coming. It’s already here.