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Version: ROS 2 Jazzy

Battery

Each robot platform can support different types of batteries, and in different configurations. The configuration is how many batteries the robot has in series and parallel.A configuration of S2P1 indicates that there is one row of two batteries in series. S4P3 indicates that there are 3 parallel rows of 4 batteries in series, for a total of 12 batteries.

Some robots support "smart" batteries which have built in battery management system (BMS). If these batteries are specified, a corresponding driver node will be launched as part of the platform service. For batteries without a BMS, the battery state estimator node will be launched. This node will interpolate the state of charge of the robot from measured battery voltages.

The battery state of the platform is available on the platform/bms/state topic.

note

For systems without a BMS, the state of charge should be treated as a rough estimate. This is especially true with Lead Acid batteries.

BatteryChemistryNominal Voltage (V)Capacity (Ah)Configurations
S_24V20_U1Lithium Ion25.6V20.0S1P2
S1P4
S1P6

For example for an A200:

battery:
model: ES20_12C
configuration: S2P1