The purpose of this study was to explore a novel approach to power hybridization in relation\nto its effectiveness in an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). This hybridization method is modeled\nafter the power distribution methods found in living organisms, which utilize glycogen stores and\nadipose tissue to optimize power and energy density strengths and weaknesses. A UGV rover was\nconstructed with an appropriate distribution of power storage elements creating separate power\nbuffers. The primary buffer consisted of a 10 W solar panel array and a 600 F, 5.4 V supercapacitor\nbank, and the secondary buffer consisted of a 3.7 V 6 Ah lithium-ion battery pack. The primary buffer\nprovided virtually limitless charge cycles with a superior power density juxtaposed with a secondary\nbuffer that provided superior energy density and volumetric versatility. The design of this rover is\npresented in this paper; it was tested under manual and autonomous modes. The rover was found\nto be capable of effectively operating solely on the primary power buffer in high to low luminous\nconditions while being able to carry out basic extravehicular activities. The rover could travel roughly\n22 km without any input power on a full charge of both buffers, and could smoothly switch between\nits own power buffers during operation, all while transmitting live first person video (FPV) and\nnetwork data. The introduction of control algorithms on the onboard microcontroller unit (MCU) was\nalso explored in both manual and autonomous configurations. The latter integrated linear regression\nto intelligently manage power and locomotion based on sensory data from photoresistors.
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