System-Level Design and Experimental Validation of Dynamic Optical Wireless Power Transmission for Ground Mobile Platforms

Optical wireless power transmission (OWPT) can provide dynamic power to ground mobile platforms without requiring densely distributed power-transfer hardware along the roadway. Dynamic OWPT differs from stationary power transfer because the optical distribution on the receiver, photovoltaic output, stored energy, and vehicle load vary with vehicle position. In this study, a system-level design framework based on integrated optical–electrical–motion modeling was established and experimentally evaluated using a miniature ground-vehicle platform. The analysis showed that suppressing beam divergence alone does not necessarily improve transfer performance because increasing focal length can increase aperture loss. Consequently, an optimum optical configuration arises from the trade-off between beam spreading and vignetting. Using the redesigned optical system, continuous driving over at least 50 m was achieved experimentally at 9.9 W per source, less than half the 21.7 W required previously. Numerical analysis further showed that the same design principle applies to a more complex driving path, where continuous driving over at least 82 m was also experimentally demonstrated under a selected source-power condition. These results highlight the importance of integrated optical and vehicle-system design and provide design guidelines for future dynamic-OWPT systems for ground mobile platforms.