In the attic I found my son's old electric toothbrush set. He had refused to use it as a child, and it got shelved. So what?
Well I was looking to modify the brushes so I could use them to clean electronic circuit boards. I looked at the charging mechanism and found it to be quite clever.
The handle of the motor/battery module is hollow. It fits into a well that has an iron stub coming up which fits into a well in the bottom of the hand held assembly. The battery in the module is charged by a loose transformer coupling. The primary is in the base and the secondary is in the hand held module.
This could be applied, if it already hasn't been, to a neat charger that requires no bare wire connection between the charger and the robot. I can envision a system where the robot, when it feels the need for a charge, would naviagate to the charger and engage it by sliding over the extended metal tranformer core. Almost pornographic!
Seems simple enough, in theory, that is.
Any thoughts?
Al