DynaCharge: Dynamic charging of Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV)

Less downtime, longer battery life and smaller batteries

Charging on the move is not the right description for the solution developed by Jannis Noeren and Lukas Elbracht. It is a combination of inductive charging while travelling and during short downtimes. The increased efficiency results from the optimised design of the interaction between the two charging systems. However, the details are a business secret, but the aim is to help industrial companies to manage their industrial trucks sustainably and efficiently. ‘By introducing dynamic charging systems, we are able to minimise the downtime of industrial trucks and significantly increase battery life. Smaller batteries are also required,’ explains Jannis.

The two founders have been a team since their collaboration at the IEW of the University of Stuttgart. As part of the MobiLab real laboratory, they developed the inductive charging road, which will be used one day to drive driverless shuttles across the car-free campus. ‘Jannis is more of a hardware guy, I was more concerned with the simulation of the coil design,’ says Lukas. The project raised awareness of the potential of dynamic charging. As large corporations and initiatives were already working on the application for large vehicles, they found a gap in the market for a potential start-up in industrial trucks. ‘There aren't many contactless dynamic charging systems for AGVs on the market yet and the old approaches are all more inefficient than ours,’ explains Jannis.

Pioneers for dynamic charging

As part of the ICM bottom-up project DynaCharge, they are now in the middle of developing a functional prototype that will form the basis for founding the company. The first challenge is already waiting. The founders have to combine the desire for perfection from their research with economic aspects such as cost-optimised and transferable design and safety standards. Their participation in the Early Ride programme last autumn and winter therefore came just at the right time. ‘We are very good at developing new solutions and implementing them quickly. However, we still have a lot to learn in order to build a company. We were able to clarify many of our questions about this as part of the programme,’ explains Jannis. The programme also brought them into contact with people from the industry whose knowledge should help them to avoid the biggest mistakes during the market launch. Those with economic expertise are exactly the kind of people they could well imagine as co-founders. They are determined to pursue their vision. ‘In the medium term, we want to develop an innovative and competitive system with a pilot customer,’ says Lukas. This is the starting point for their major goal of taking a leading role in the design and manufacture of dynamic loading systems in intralogistics.

Benjamin Büchner

Redaktion und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, InnovationsCampus Mobilität der Zukunft

E-Mail: medien(at)icm-bw.de