Power Distribution

An overview of the electrical components we use in powering the robot:

This article, and those that follow, use electrical terminology. All of this terminology is documented in (link).

Power comes from the battery, which has its own page (link). The ground wire runs straight from the battery terminal to the PDH, while the voltage wire runs through a breaker somewhere accessible on the robot.

The heart of the robot is the PDH, which distributes power from the battery through 24 channels, 20 high current (12V, 40A), 4 low current (12V, 15A). It connects via CAN (Rio loop) (additionally, it can be used to terminate the CAN loop, but we rarely use that. More on CAN later). All of the channels need breakers in order to operate.

The high current channels then run either directly to components (ex. motors) or to a MPM (mini power module). The mini power module splits power from 1 high current channel into 6 low current channels.

Additionally, an alternative to the MPM is the VRM (voltage regulation module) which has more flexibility in terms of voltage. Most components on the robot are built for the 12V power distributed by the PDH and MPM, but some stuff such as strip lights require the VRM's 5V channels. the VRM is powered by a low current channel from a PDH or MPM.

We use 10 (and occasionally, 12) gauge wire for high current channels. Splits in these lower gauge wires are done with Anderson Power Pole connectors.

For the low current channels 18 or 22 gauge wires are used, and for splits Molex connectors are used. Refer to the wiring guide for more information.