Mechanical Design Continue...

Cleaner and pump system

• Cleaner system

The cleaner systems consist of two wiping disks and one wiping bar which placed below the chassis. The wiping disks were made from hard rubber with 14cm diameter of each disk. The rotating of the wiping disks was controlled by the 24V-12W DC motor through the pulley systems which design in Solidworks program (Figure 1). The task of wiping disks is taking dry foam rubber for dry cleaning.

Figure 1: Wiping disks

The wiping bar was made by aluminum. It was design for wet cleaning. The foam rubber in the wiping bar will be moist by the water received from pump system through the small pipe (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Wiping bar

• Pump system

The pump system consists of water tank and small water pump which place on the chassis of the FCR (shown in Figure 3). The water tank was made from aluminum with the dimension 50mm × 210mm × 125mm. It can contain 1.3l water and detergent for cleaning task. This combination will be transmitted from the water tank to a wiping bar through a small pipe by a 12V-6W water pump. The water pump was controlled by a microcontroller to optimize the system.

Figure 3: Pump system

Figure 4: Position of pump and cleaner system on the chassis

Mechanical Design

Based on the working purpose, the structure of the Floor Cleaner Robot must be strong, durable and balance. The four wheeled locomotion will be chosen for this robot prototype. In which two motorized wheels in the rear, two steered wheels in the front; steering has to be different for the two wheels to avoid slipping and skidding (Figure 1).

 Figure 1: Mobile robot wheels arrangement

Moreover, in order to assemble working mechanisms (such as water tank, battery, motors, wiping system, etc.) more conveniently, the aluminum frame structure was a considerable solution. For easier in floor cleaning the mobile robot must have a low center bias and the structure also must be compact and low. From those characteristic, the dimension of the FCR was estimate about 30cm in high, 30cm in width and 40cm in length. The more design detail will be discussed below.

Basic Idea

Floor cleaning job took away a lot of time, especially in the big room, soft carpet, and wood or marble floors. It is also difficult to clean tortuous in the house like space underneath the table, bed, etc. According to those reasons, and the indispensable demand of life, the idea of design a mobile robot which cleans the floor was formed.
A Floor Cleaner Robot (FCR) is an autonomous robot that take care the house floor cleaning task. Its duty is cleaning almost the floor area of the house in the shortest time and can determine when the task completes.

The robot is designed to be easily modifiable for a given application. It is constructed using traditional prototype techniques that allow it to be built quickly and inexpensively. A novel design is utilized for the vehicle’s suspension. This design is simpler, cheaper, and more easily customized than traditional system that perform the same task.

It will plan the working path by itself to accomplish the cleaning task quickly. A new approach to obstacle avoidance is used, based on ultrasonic sensor signals. Besides that, it also using digital compass to navigation in the working environment.