Wireless charging pad detection and alignment using a fisheye camera for electric vehicles

The market for electric vehicles is growing day by day and electric car chargers can be seen often on pavements of the major cities and towns. With this growing market, industry is already looking for another breakthrough, i.e. wireless vehicle charging. This is much like charging smart phones using wireless charging pads instead of plugging the vehicle in. Industry is exploring ways to charge Electric vehicles wirelessly when the car is parked over a charger on the ground beneath it. For the wireless charging to work, both elements must be well aligned. This paper explores using vision based approaches to provide the automatic recognition, localisation and tracking of an inductive plate for wireless car charging. Visual feedback is provided to a motion control system for accurate charger alignment.