Towards Autonomous Energy-Wise RObjects

In this article, the RObject concept is first introduced. This is followed by a survey of applicable energy scavenging technologies. Energy is a key issue for the large scale deployment of robotics in daily life, as recharging the batteries places a considerable burden on the end-user and is a waste of energy which has an overall negative impact on the limited resources of our planet. We show how the energy obtained from light, water flow, and human work, could be promising sources of energy for powering low-duty devices. To assess the feasibility of powering future RObjects with technologies, tests were conducted on commonly available robotic vacuum cleaners. These tests established an upper-bound on the power requirements for RObjects. Finally, based on these results, the feasibility of powering RObjects using scavenged energy is discussed.