Hyderabad: A special charging solution for electric scooters have been developed by a team of researchers at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H).
The team has designed a complete end-to-end charging solution from the electronic hardware components that are sturdy and safe enough for outdoor deployments to the software that contains an appropriate processor to control all input and output devices of the system.
In a paper titled, "Compact Electric Vehicle Charging Station Using Open Charge Point Protocol for E-Scooters" that has been presented at the 2021 International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Future Electric Transportation, Dr Aftab Hussain and his team of researchers has proposed a unique design and fabrication of charging equipment specifically for e-scooter.
Much like the interface at an ATM, the user has to swipe an RFID card that authenticates her before she enters the amount for which charging has to be done.
The compact nature of the charger also makes it possible to deploy it in densely populated urban centres where a need for such chargers is most felt.
Another striking feature is the safety instructions such as emergency disconnection of AC power supply in case it goes beyond a minimum threshold, or in case of hardware faults have also been incorporated.
"Our design scores over others' as it allows users to roam between the charging stations irrespective of the vehicle manufacturer, whether it is an Okinawa or a Hero e-scooter," said Deeksha, the lead author of the paper.