Design of an automatic electric vehicle batteries discharging station

The worldwide spread of electric mobility will lead to problems, in the near future, that have never been experienced before. In particular, the enormous quantity of lithium batteries that are the basis of this revolution will have to be disposed of or recycled. It is therefore of primary importance to develop an appropriate technological process to face this challenge. The work exhibited in this thesis is part of LIBRES, a Norwegian project owned by the company "Norsk Hydro", with the goal of finding fully-automated solutions for complete Lithium-Ion batteries recycling. The case study is the design of an automatic discharge station for electric vehicles batteries, focused on the artificial vision system, a structured light camera capable of detecting the battery connectors and locating them in 3D space; and on the feed-back control of the discharge process, based on the acquisition performed by a thermal camera, which monitor the process. The proposed automatic system significantly increases performance compared to manual discharge, currently performed, and furthermore increases safety standards.