Motion Control by Wireless Transmission of Power Packets: Experimental Verification with Multi-finger Robot Hand

Wireless power transmission (WPT) is promising technology allowing robot hand to increase mobility and improve robustness of joints. However, there are two challenges for its full utilization. First, for articulated robot powering, multi-channel WPT is required for independent power supply to each joint. Second, additional communication wires are required for conveying control commands to each joint, which spoils the advantage of WPT. Addressing the challenges, we apply power packetization to WPT. Power packetization integrates power and information transmission on the physical layer. This paper demonstrates that power packet can wirelessly deliver to each finger of robot hand both a displacement command and electric power to be used for the control.