Beyond the Battery: 24/7 Wireless Charging in rows

Everyone in AgTech talks about automation, but they often forget the most important part: power. A robot with a dead battery is just an expensive obstacle. Running a fleet of autonomous robots 24/7 in a large-scale greenhouse presents a massive power challenge.

Last season, we learned this the hard way. Our old charging strategy was a constant bottleneck. It was manual, inefficient, and created logistical headaches that held back our "automated" system.

For this season, we engineered a new solution from the ground up. We didn't just add a charger; we built an intelligent, scalable power strategy. Here’s our blueprint for how we achieved true 24/7, "hands-off" automation.

The "Mistake": Our Old Bottlenecks

Our previous system suffered from two fundamental flaws:

1. The "Daily Plug-in" Chore: Our old system used standard plug-in chargers. This was simply inefficient and a high-friction task. It meant a staff member had to manually plug in and unplug every single FRAVEBOT, every single day. It was a constant manual touchpoint in a system that was supposed to be autonomous.

2. The "Travel to Charge" Problem: We had a centralized charging area, which meant our FRAVEBOTs had to waste valuable time traveling from their work zone just to get power. This "dead mileage" killed our efficiency and created traffic jams for the fleet.

We knew that to truly scale, we needed a system where robots could charge themselves, where they work.

The Solution: A Distributed, Wireless Power Network

Our new blueprint is built on three core pillars: the right hardware, a distributed infrastructure, and smart software logic.

The Conductix Wampfler IPS 3.0 power supply, mounted and sealed.

1. The Right Hardware: Industrial, Contact-Free Charging

The greenhouse is a tough environment—humidity, dust, and water are everywhere. Standard plug-in connectors are a guaranteed point of failure.

We chose to integrate the Conductix Wampfler IPS 3.0 inductive charging system. Because it's wireless (inductive), there are no open contacts to corrode or clean. The entire system is sealed, robust, and designed for industrial use.

More importantly, it's powerful. Our FRAVEBOTs run on heavy-duty 48V, 196Ah (9.4 kWh) batteries. The Conductix system is industrial-grade and can push the 60A our batteries need for a rapid, meaningful charge.

2. The Infrastructure: The "100-Row Rule"

This is the key to our scalability. Instead of a central charging room, we created a distributed network by installing chargers directly in the rows.

Our simple but effective rule of thumb: one charging station for every 100 rows.

We integrated the charging pads directly into the pipe-rail system. This means a FRAVEBOT is never far from a power source. It can continue its work, and when it needs to, it can dock at the nearest pad. This completely eliminates the "dead-mileage" problem.

A FRAVEBOT docked over the in-rail charging pad

3. The Logic: "Opportunity Charging" vs. "Run-to-Empty"

Finally, we changed our fleet's software logic.

In our old system, a robot would "run-to-empty," then go out of service for a long recharge.

Our new logic is based on "opportunity charging." A FRAVEBOT is now programmed to use small windows of idle time to autonomously dock and top up its battery. Is it waiting for another robot? Is it at the end of a row? It takes that 30-second window to get a quick power boost.

This small change has a massive impact: our entire fleet stays at a high state of charge (e.g., 70-90%) all day long, rather than swinging from 100% to 10%. The fleet is always ready, and no single robot is ever out of service for hours.

The IPS 3.0 display showing a strong, stable charge being delivered to the robot.

The Result: True, "Hands-Off" Automation

The difference is night and day. After a full season running this new strategy, we have:

• Zero manual charging labor.

• Eliminated charging bottlenecks.

• Drastically increased fleet efficiency and uptime.

• A proven, scalable, and reliable model we can deploy in any size greenhouse.

This is what we mean by "automation." It’s not just the robot; it's the entire ecosystem that supports it. By solving the power problem, we've unlocked the true potential of our FRAVEBOT fleet.