Position-insensitive Wireless Power Transfer System for Long-Range Moving Seat in Autonomous Electric Vehicles

This paper presents a position-insensitive wireless power transfer system designed for long-range moving seats in autonomous electric vehicles. Autonomous electric vehicles offer passengers unprecedented freedom and flexibility, allowing seats to be repurposed for resting, working, or entertainment while traveling. Advanced seating systems, such as those with long-range motion, tilt adjustment, heating, and massage functions, demand higher power delivery. However, traditional wired methods restrict seat mobility and pose safety risks due to potential wire damage, tangling, and electrical failures. To address these challenges, the proposed wireless power system adopts a joint structure consisting of a long-fixed cylinder as the transmitter and shorter movable cylinders with cylindrical coils as the receivers, which produces a homogeneous magnetic field in the horizontal plane, maintaining a stable and consistent coupling factor between the transmitter and receiver. As a result, the proposed system ensures a stable and reliable power supply, even during extensive horizontal seat movements, without significant changes in performance. The measured results confirmed that the movement of the single receiver coil in a horizontal distance range from 0 cm to 70 cm has a small effect on the efficiency and output power, which remains less than 3% under the same load conditions. The measured results also showed that two receiver coils have a minimum effect on each other of less than 3% for efficiency and output power, with a maximum efficiency of 92.1% and a maximum output power of 718W achieved for both receiver coils, indicating its reliability for long-range moving seats in autonomous electric vehicles.