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.

Design and Implementation of an Autonomous Water Surface Cleaning Robot

“…Testing showed that the robot can effectively collect and carry up to 16 kg of rubbish at a time [14].…”

EnviRobots: How Human–Robot Interaction Can Facilitate Sustainable Behavior

“…Another sustainability application for robots is water clean-up, with multiple robots designed for collecting litter along the surface of rivers, ponds, and lakes. Rahmawati et al [4], for example, developed a robot that can remove up to 20kg of surface trash in one expedition. In addition to water surface cleaning, the robot developed by Turesinin et al [2] also monitors the state of the water by collecting information about the pH, turbidity, and temperature, and supports a live streaming feature, which allows ecologists to keep track of the water's quality.…”

“…Sustainability has become an increasingly urgent societal challenge that must be addressed as quickly and efficiently as possible (e.g., see [1]). One line of attack has involved deploying autonomous robots for various sustainability tasks, from environmental monitoring, to picking up and sorting trash (e.g., [2][3][4][5][6]). Yet, the potential of autonomous robots to contribute to sustainability does not stop with autonomous machines operating independently from humans.…”

Design of solar conversion device for self-propelled trash cleaning boat

“…For navigation and litter removal on the ground, a number of well-designed algorithms have been developed for both individual robot systems and swarms. However, these algorithms cannot be used directly on the water due to the dynamic environment, differences in propulsion systems and the difficulty of accurately determining the current position based on relative velocity and acceleration [6] .…”