Shape-Reconfigurable Charger: Magnetic Power Pathway Programming via Computed Morphing

Abstract

Wireless power transfer (WPT) enables contactless power delivery, with magnetic resonance coupling (MRC-WPT) as a leading approach. However, existing MRC-WPT systems rely on fixed transmitter (TX) geometries, limiting their tolerance to receiver (RX) displacement. While circuit-level tuning can improve power flow, it operates within fixed magnetic pathways and cannot reconfigure the field at the source, thus offering limited adaptability. This paper presents Shape-Reconfigurable Charger (SRC), an in-plane MRC-WPT charging system that senses its pose, morphs its structure to optimize power pathways, and adapts its configuration. SRC employs silicone tubes filled with liquid metal (LM) as coils and attaches liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fibers as tendons, enabling morphable TX coils. We formulate online coil configuration as a dynamic black-box optimization and develop a distributed Bayesian optimization framework that runs on each TX, requiring no RX communication or inter-TX coordination. A hardware prototype demonstrates our performance across diverse RX placements: SRC improves power delivered to load (PDL) by 174% over frequency tuning and 96% over motorized rotation on average. By reframing the TX design as adaptive field shaping, SRC moves MRC-WPT beyond rigid transmission toward programmable magnetic pathways, advancing the vision of truly unconstrained wireless charging.