As part of my work in the Marine Autonomy Lab, I was tasked with building a 12s3p AA battery pack that would work with the Lab's Spurdog UAVs. The goal was to create a 3D-printable and compact pack that could deliver roughly 18 V nominal and store around 135 Wh of energy, while still fitting within the limited payload space on the vehicle.
This ended up being trickier than expected. The spacing tolerance was only a few millimeters, so I had to rethink how to orient and connect the batteries. Initially, it was recommended that I use 3 layers of 12 batteries working in series. Based on battery constraints, however, I think this would be rather impractical.
After thinking and advice from friends, I decided that a flashlight-like solution with stacking batteries that were in series was more practical, both for space and for installation on the machine. I have developed a working prototype, however it does not meet the space constraint.
In the future, I am considering changing the design so that they are stacked on their side, which will help with the overall height. This may make installation of nickel tabs more difficult, but likely will solve the vertical height constraint.
This has been put lower on the priority now that I have a working concept, so I am working mostly on writing code for the Ping360 Sonar to integrate it with the lab's Spurdog UUVs and BlueBoats.
