Title: Estimating Achievable Range of Ground Robots Operating on Single Battery Discharge for Operational Efficacy Amelioration,
Abstract: Mobile robots are increasingly being used to assist with active pursuit and
law enforcement. One major limitation for such missions is the resource
(battery) allocated to the robot. Factors like nature and agility of evader,
terrain over which pursuit is being carried out, plausible traversal velocity
and the amount of necessary data to be collected all influence how long the
robot can last in the field and how far it can travel. In this paper, we
develop an analytical model that analyzes the energy utilization for a variety
of components mounted on a robot to estimate the maximum operational range
achievable by the robot operating on a single battery discharge. We categorize
the major consumers of energy as: 1.) ancillary robotic functions such as
computation, communication, sensing etc., and 2.) maneuvering which involves
propulsion, steering etc. Both these consumers draw power from the common power
source but the achievable range is largely affected by the proportion of power
available for maneuvering. For this case study, we performed experiments with
real robots on planar and graded surfaces and evaluated the estimation error
for each case.