A Robot Architecture for Detecting Dust and Cleaning Solar Panels

Editors

A. Bossard (Ed.)

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Publication Title

Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computers and Their Applications, CATA 2016

Publisher

The International Society for Computers and Their Applications (ISCA)

First page number:

393

Last page number:

398

Abstract

Large and small scale solar panel facilities have become more common. Dust and bird droppings on the solar panels inhibit the energy production. Having people to inspect them and clean them if need to is expensive and increases the energy cost. In this research paper we introduce a robot for the purpose of inspecting the panels and cleaning them if there is a need for it. The general architecture of the robot consists of a mechanical part, an electromechanical part, an electronics part, and a software part. The mechanical and electromechanical parts consist of an all-terrain vehicle, two electric brushless motors, a telescopic vision system, and telescopic cleaning system with a brush, stepper motors controlling the telescopic vision system, and the telescopic vacuum system with a brushless electric motor. The electronics system consists of three electronic speed controllers, navigation sensors, a computer board, a hard disk, a transceiver, and an antenna for wireless communications. The software consists of a scalable operating system, an intelligent vision system with pattern recognition, a communication software system, an intelligent navigation system, and a file server with a database, TLS security, network communication software based on UDP, and internet communication based on websockets and TCP-IP. Copyright ISCA.

Keywords

Autonomous vehicles; Intelligent machines; Pattern recognition; WebSockets

Language

English


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