Glossary · Hardware
Battery hot-swap
In brief
Battery hot-swap is the ability to replace a depleted battery with a charged one without powering the robot down. For humanoids running multi-shift operations, hot-swap matters — it determines whether duty cycle is bounded by battery life or by mechanical wear.
Most humanoid platforms run 2–5 hours per battery. Without hot-swap, that is also the maximum continuous run time before a full power-down and reboot. With hot-swap, the operator pulls the depleted pack and slots a charged one without losing state, and the robot keeps working.
For warehouse and logistics deployments, hot-swap is the difference between a unit that needs scheduled rest cycles and one that runs alongside a multi-shift human team. The mechanical and electrical engineering to do hot-swap reliably is non-trivial — power continuity during the swap, packs that align mechanically, software that handles the transition without faults.
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