Automatic recognition and location system for electric vehicle charging port in complex environment

This study proposes an automatic recognition and location system of electric vehicle charging port with application to automatic charging. The system obtains the charging port posture through image processing, and performs the insertion motion in combination with the robot arm to complete the charging gun insertion of the automatic charging link. The framework of the system is mainly divided into three parts, recognition, location and insertion. In the charging port recognition, the convolutional neural network-based method is used, and the recognition success rate is up to 98.9% under the light intensity of 4000 lux; in the location of the charging port, the method of solving the pose based on the circle feature is adopted. The average value of the position error is within 1.4 mm, and the average value of the attitude angle error is within 1.6°, which meets the accuracy requirement of the insertion experiment; in the charging gun insertion, the motion of the robot is planned by interpolation algorithm. The lower limit of the successful insertion is about 135 lux and the upper limit is about 9350 lux.