Development of Small-scale Underwater Robot With Sidewall Cleaning Function

• Main Authors: JUNG-CHE LEE, 李榮哲
• Other Authors: Yih-Lin Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/70262378143321356805

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 機械工程系 === 100 === Nowadays the underwater cleaning of the exhibition glass walls in aquariums or large fish tanks is mainly done by manual work. There is no suitable small-scale underwater cleaning robot for this purpose. Therefore, this research plans to design and manufacture a prototype of a small-scale underwater cleaning robot with automatic side-wall cleaning function. The design concept of the robot adopts innovative and simple triangular structure and system integration. With simple control and path planning, side-wall cleaning can be achieved. In this research, in order to balance the torque generated by the propeller at each side, two propellers at each side rotating clockwise and counter-clockwise were adopted in the design. Moreover, the propeller sets could be rotated upward or downward to certain angles from the horizontal plane to drive the robot moving up or down. This design replaced the propeller in the center of the robot for Z-axis movement, leaving more space inside the robot for circuits and other modules. To detect the corner during the automatic cleaning, the polyimide corner sensors, each equipped with two strain gauges, were attached at the vertices of the triangular robot. As for cleaning module, the shape of the cleaning pads was designed to cover larger area and also to consider cleaning needs at corners. In addition, the empty column space in the cleaning modules can be used for weight balancing. Rapid prototyping techniques were utilized to generate parts and molds for the robot prototype. The overall size of the robot is 250mm×220mm×80mm. The robot prototype was assembled and underwater tested. The test results showed that the robot can perform not only side-wall cleaning by manual control, but also automatic cleaning in accordance with a predetermined path.