Autonomous Docking and Recharging

A robot that finds its own way back to a charging dock and lines itself up to recharge when the battery runs low.

Autonomous docking and recharging means a robot, when its battery runs low or a task finishes, navigates back to a charging dock on its own, aligns with the contacts or plug, completes charging, and heads back out. Robot vacuums were the first to make this common, and today quadrupeds, inspection robots, and mobile bases largely treat it as a standard feature. The hard part is the last few centimeters of alignment, usually solved with infrared beacons, markers like QR codes or AprilTags, or matching the shape of the dock with lidar. Compared with autonomous battery swapping, docking to recharge is mechanically simpler and cheaper, but the robot can't work while it's charging.

ExampleWhen a robot vacuum finishes cleaning or its battery gets low, it drives itself back to its dock to recharge, then returns to where it left off once it's full.

Also called

Auto-Return Charging

Related

Autonomous Battery Swapping · Battery Runtime · Wireless (Inductive) Charging · Robot Vacuum Cleaner · AprilTag · Navigation

Sources

Wikipedia: Robotic vacuum cleaner
Wikipedia: Charging station