Wireless Power Transfer for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Abstract

In this work, we develop a wireless power transfer (WPT) system for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). The objective of this work is to reduce the time of onsite AUV's battery disassembling and assembling process. To apply the wireless charging system can solve the conventional charging in term of flexibility and convenience. The effect of coupling factors at different distances between transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) coil in seawater was investigated. It is confirm that TX and RX coil has higher coupling coefficient when it was operated in the seawater. To validate the proposed system, a laboratory hardware prototype was built and tested. Hence, the results were revealed that the proposed WPT system could work properly according to the proposed concept with the maximum receiving power of 51.48-W while the maximum power transfer efficiency was around 70-%.