Autonomous External Glass Cleaning Robot

This paper deals with an autonomous external glass cleaning robot that can perform the operation by ensuring proper adhesion to the glass as well as movement along the entire window without colliding with the window pane or any other obstacle. The concept used in this work to actuate the robot is pneumatics wherein a pneumatic cylinder is coupled with a linear channel made up of stainless steel. It has a guide and a block which are connected through a chain and sprocket. The block can move along the guide. The piston of the cylinder is coupled with the block while the cylinder barrel is coupled with the guide. Adhesion of the robot to the glass is ensured using the vacuum technology. Four suction cups are used to make the robot adhered to the glass. Two channels are placed at right angle with each other, one for horizontal motion and one for vertical motion. Stepwise movement of the robot is achieved by individual control of suction cups. This is done using the software Arduino and Arduino UNO R3 microcontroller. Ultrasonic sensors are used to measure the dimension of the window pane as well as detect the obstacle/edge of the window. The cylinders and vacuum generators are actuated using solenoid DCV’s. As the robot moves, a rotating disk located at the bottom of the robot has a cleaning brush/sponge attached to it which cleans the glass as the robot and hence the entire glass surface is covered and cleaning operation is performed autonomously. The advantage of this robot is its simple design and its feasibility. The fact that we are able to successfully move the robot on a vertical glass frame without damaging it allows us to use it for several other applications too such as inspection.