I’ve got the POWER!

Based on the experience gained on the ERC23, the FHNW Rover Team has planned various revisions. The most significant change is to double the system supply voltage from the unregulated battery voltage around 24V to 48V. This allows us to have a more powerful drivetrain. To achieve a longer operating time for the rover, we added a second battery and a hot-swappable system for it.ConceptThe power supply is an essential component of the Rover. Therefore, it must function reliably and under continuous load. A lot of effort went into the consideration of the system, and we came up with the solution described below.Concept and the revision A PCBDC/DCSince the batteries have output voltage between 21V and 30V and the new rover operates at 48V, we had to design a step-up converter. The design challenge was to support the peak-power consumption we measured at the ERC23, plus some extra puffer. So,…