Battery Management System (BMS)

The circuitry and software that monitor and protect a battery pack and estimate its remaining charge.

A battery management system is a set of circuitry and software built into a battery pack that continuously measures each cell's voltage, current, and temperature, uses that to estimate state of charge (SOC) and state of health (SOH), cuts the circuit during overcharge, over-discharge, overcurrent, or overtemperature conditions, and balances charge across cells so they stay even. Mobile robots run on lithium batteries, and the large, sudden current draws from joint motors — plus the current that flows back in during braking — put real stress on the battery, so the BMS determines how accurate the charge reading is, whether the robot suddenly cuts out, and how long the battery lasts. It typically reports charge level and warnings to the onboard compute platform over a bus such as CAN, and both hot-swappable batteries and autonomous battery swapping rely on it to confirm battery state.

ExampleThe battery-percentage number shown in a robot's app is the BMS's estimate, reported up over the bus.

Also called

BMS

Related

Battery Runtime · Hot-Swappable Battery · Autonomous Battery Swapping · Solid-State Battery · Controller Area Network (CAN) · Regenerative Braking and Brake (Shunt) Resistor

Sources

Battery management system - Wikipedia