HydroBot is a demonstrator platform for fuel cell electric vehicles. The aim of the project was to develop a remote-controlled robot that is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The power supply system was designed analogously to fuel cell cars, with a fuel cell stack and a battery as a combined power supply system. The robotic platform uses Mecanum wheels as a drive system, which allows it to drive in any direction without requiring a classical steering assembly.
More detailed information on the project can be found in this Instructable. These videos show the driving capabilities of its Mecanum wheels, the operation of the fuel cell, and an overview of all the components in the CAD model.
HydroBot was developed by the Helmholtz-Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy (HI ERN) to showcase an application of fuel cells. The idea of the project was to manufacture a prototype suitable as a demonstrator for fairs, and to get a glimpse into system integration, which is not part of the core competencies of the department that developed HydroBot.
This repository contains detailed data and information on the project, such as its user manual, datasheets of the included components, CAD files of the printed parts, Gerber files of PCBs, and code for the microcontrollers used in this project.
Contributors: HydroBot was developed by the Electrocatalytic Interface Engineering Research Department of the Helmholtz-Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy, which is part of Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. Members of the project team are (in alphabetical order) Dr. Thomas Böhm, Anna T. S. Freiberg, Carina Götz, Adrian Hartert, Christoph Hübner, Hye Jin Lee, Marco Martini, Julian Mitrovic, Rohit Rajendran Menon, Nico Roubicek, Prof. Dr. Simon Thiele, and Anja Tröster. AISLER is gratefully acknowledged for sponsoring PCBs used in this project.