A Water Surface Cleaning Robot

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a robot for cleaning rubbish floating on the water surface. Three important issues for designing the aquatic robots are a cost-effective solution along with robustness and durability. Due to the nature of the cleaning work, we designed the vehicle structure that can provide high stability, good ability in maneuver and can easily collect all the waste flowing in between. A pontoon shaped hull works best for this case and fulfils all the hydrostatic, structural stability criteria. For removal and collection of surface waste, a motor-driven collecting-arm system has been designed for collecting the wastes and redeploying it into a rectangular basket on the hull. This design provides simple and effective waste removal and accommodates large amounts of waste within a small space. For the prototype, the hulls were made up of styrofoam which is wrapped by fibre and then coated with waterproof and resin. It supported together by aluminum. This light and tough structure support the total weight of the system. The propulsion system based on a differential drive mechanism has been designed, which allows the robots to take a 360 turn on the spot and provides high thrust. Electronic circuit and motors have been placing inside the hull, in order to protect them from water. The robot is manually controlled by remote control based on Xbee Pro wireless modules. The testing of the robot prototype proved to be effective in waste collecting and removal. The maximum trash loads that robot can bear is up 16 kg.