Rooftop Solar Panel Cleaning Robot Using Omni
Wheels
Thanapon Sorndach Noppadol Pudchuen
Department of Production Engineering Department of Production Engineering
King Mongkut’s University of King Mongkut’s University of
Technology North Bangkok Technology North Bangkok
Bangkok, Thailand Bangkok, Thailand
Abstract—A solar panel cleaning robot was developed by using
omni-wheels so that the robot can rotate and move freely and
avoid turning the robot during operation. This research designed
and developed drive system of the robot for climbing the inclined
and slippery solar panels. The robot was equipped with sensors
and encoders to accurately control its movement such as moved
across gaps between panels and stops at the ends of panels. The
results show that the robot was able to move on the inclined solar
panels up to 10º inclined angle. The moving speed varied from
0.16-0.34 m/s when moving upward and downward inclined
panels due to slipping. By comparing to the normal robot after 12
meters of cleaning distance, the omni wheel robot had position
error of 0.3% (similar to normal robot) but saved about 64% of
cleaning time by using rotating movement instead of turning.
Keywords - omni wheels; solar panel cleaner; robot cleaner
I. INTRODUCTION
The solution for solar panel cleaning has becomes
increasingly significant because more solar panels has been
installed. The ability of electric generated depends on
amount of the light that passes through the semiconductor
[1]. It was reported that a dust layer of 4 gram per square
meter decreased solar power conversion by 40 percent [2] as
shown in Fig.1.
Presently, there are several types of cleaning process
widely used in solar panel cleaning. Automatic solar panel
cleaning is a desirable solution to invest because human
cleaning is inconsistent and sometimes not safe for rooftop
solar panels. In this work, we developed an automatic
cleaning robot by focusing on design of a driving system
using omni wheels. The omni wheel is able to move freely in
two directions and allows multi-directional motion applied
on a flat surface. Therefore, the omni wheels have been used
in many applications to provide flexibility of rotational
movement of robots instead of slowly turning robot. For
solar panel cleaning, it can reduce unnecessary cleaning time
and results in more efficient cleaning [3].
II. IMPACT OF DIRTS ON SOLAR PANEL EFFICIENCY
Efficiency of solar panels depends on weather and
pollution condition such as dust, sand, and snow. For
example, dusts reduce transparency of glass on solar panels
and obscure the solar cells from the incident light, causing
low efficiency for electricity generation.
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Pornsak Srisungsitthisunti
Department of Production Engineering
King Mongkut’s University of
Technology North Bangkok
Bangkok, Thailand
pornsak.s@eng.kmutnb.ac.th
Figure 1. The graph shows the effects of dust: (a) solar power produced
and (b) solar power loss due to accumulated dusts over time [4].
The graph in Fig.1(a) shows the relation of power (watt)
produced with the dust accumulation time (min). When
dusts accumulated at higher rate (kg/h), the production of
electricity dropped rapidly. Fig.1(b) shows the relationship
between the reduction in solar concentration and the time of
dust accumulation (min). This experiment revealed that the
dusts accumulation rate of 5 kg/h can reduce solar power
production by half in about 6 minutes.
III. SOLAR CLEANING ROBOTS
Today, the methods of solar panel cleaning have been
greatly improved by considering the convenience and safety
of cleaner. The cleaning method must not damage the solar
panels. There are a variety of cleaning methods available,
depending on the nature of the installation area and the cost
of cleaning.
The cleaning methods can be classified into three
categories: natural cleaning, manual cleaning, and automatic
cleaning. Natural cleaning includes rain, wind, dew and
gravity, while manual cleaning relies on human and tooling.
To reduce effort and cleaning time, automatic cleaning uses
automation and advanced robotic technology to replace
human.
There are three main types of automatic solar panel
cleaning systems.
3.1 Rail System
This system consists of two rigid rails as shown in Fig.2.
One of rails is installed at the top of panel and the other is
installed at the bottom of panel. The orientation of rails can
be horizontal rail (vertical brush) or vertical rail (horizontal
brush) as shown in Fig.2 [5]. The horizontal type has a large
area to clean but the brush has heavy weight. The vertical
type has a light weight brush but it takes a longer time to
clean because it has a small cleaning area. The rail system is
a fixed type so that the rails are permanently attached to
solar panels. The rails system is suitable and commonly
used for continuous panels in solar farm.
Figure 2. Typical of rail system: horizontal rail with vertical brush and
vertical rail with horizontal brush [6].
3.2 Tethered Robot System
Tethered robot uses 2, 3, or 4 cables to connect cleaning
device and to control the movement of the robot on the
panel as shown in Fig.3. This system requires poles for
holding the cables. However, strength of this system is
lower than rail system because rail system has more rigidity.
This system is suitable for rooftop panels where panels are
installed in one large area.
Figure 3. Typical of tethered system: two corners tether (left) and four
corners tethers (right) [6].
3.3 Mobile Robot System
This system is very flexible cleaning system. It does not
require any installation or extra equipment on solar panels.
It is suitable for solar panels with different configurations
because the cleaning robot can cover all panel area. The
robot can be controlled manually or automatically.
However, the robot must be strictly designed and controlled
to safely operate on slippery panels without sliding and
falling.
Figure 4. Examples of mobile system: Raybot (left) [7] and Miraikikai
Inc’s prototype (right) [8].
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IV. DESIGN OF ROBOT SYSTEM
Our robot was designed to be used on rooftop panels and
solar farm for automatic and autonomous cleaning. The robot
was driven by four omni-directional wheels as they can
either roll like a normal wheel, or roll laterally using the
rollers. Therefore, four omni wheels were installed with a
45-degree angle referencing from the heading axle of robot
as shown in Fig.5. The wheels were drived by 12V motors.
The movement and position of robot were acquired from 4
encoders underneath as shown in Fig.5 and Fig.6. The
encoder positions were installed according to the axle of
robot.
Figure 5. Components of robot and encoder positions.
Figure 6. Omni-directional drived wheels(left) and feedback wheels
(right).
In addition, the robot used sensors to prevent the robot
from falling off the panel. The photosensors were mounted
in pairs at four sides of the robot as shown in Fig.7. The
examples of sensor operations are displayed in Fig.8. Case
A, one sensor was off the panel so that the robot still kept
moving. In Case B, the sensor regained the singal from the
next panel, so both sensors were on the panels, and the robot
kept moving. In Case C, both sensors were off the panels,
the robot stops immediately to avoid falling off the edge of
the panel.
`
Figure 7. Sensors and brush positions can be additionally assembled.
8

Figure 8. Sensor operating conditions for gap detection and falling off
prevention.
The key control of omni direction movement was the
feedback signals from the rotary encoders to realize the
current position and orientation of the robot. Therefore, if
the feedback wheels do not touch the panel. The robot will
lose its position and orientation, resulting in error of
movement. Therefore, we designed the suspension of
feedback wheels to solve this problem. Fig.9 shows the
principles of this system, it had four compression springs to
create pushing force for the feedback wheels to have better
contacts with the solar panels. Springs were supported by
slide guides and plate.
Figure 9. Feedback wheels and suspension design.
Figure 10. Control diagram of the cleaning robot.
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V. HOLONOMIC-DRIVE SYSTEM
Holonomic robot refers to a robot that has the
controllable degree of freedom equal to total degrees of
freedom (DOF). Our omni wheel robot was used
holonomic-drive system because it can be moved freely in
all direction or it had 3 DOF on the plane surface. It can
move even on the moving direction that perpendicular to the
wheels. There were many omni-wheel robot designs such as
a 3-omni-wheel robot [9].
Fig.11 shows the four-wheel holonomic-drive system
that does not rotate on itself.
Figure 11. Analysis of 4 wheel holonomic-drive system.
When Vw is the velocity of robot on x or y axis, i is the
wheel angle of from reference axis, Vin is the induce
velocity of each wheel,  is the local robot orientation
respect to global frame, and Vb is the robot velocity.
According to Fig.11, Vin and Vw are always orthogonal so
it gives (1)
Vb2  Vw2  Vin2 (1)
Also
Vin2  Vb2  Vw2  2VwVb cos(   )
(2)
 Vb2  Vw2  2VwVb (cos  cos   sin  sin  )
Substituting (2) into (1), we may obtain
Vw  Vb (cos cos   sin  sin  ) (3)
For a given rotational velocity of the center of mass (  ),
each wheel must apply velocity
Vw  R (4)
When R is the distance of the wheel from the centroid and
 is the rotational velocity. So, for each wheel equation will
be
9
 Vw  Vb (cos  cos   sin  sin  )  R (5) So, the odometry wheels angular velocity vector can be
written as a function of linear and angular velocities of the
This is the general equation that is independent of the robot in matrix form as shown in (12).
number of wheels. Consider a four-wheel omni-directional 1   0 1 L  Vbx 
robot with wheels arranged at angles of 45 ,135 , 225 and    1 1 0 L  V 
 2 r    by  (12)
315 , equation (5) yield to 3   0 1 L    

  45 ; Moreover, it is simple to see that linear and angular

(6)
2 2 velocities of the robot can be obtained by solving inverse
Vw1  Vb ( cos   sin  )  R
2 2 matrix in (12). The result is shown in (13)
  135 ;  1 1 
(7)  2 1 2 
Vw1  Vb (
2
cos  
2
sin  )  R Vbx    1  (13)
2 2 V   r  1 0 
1  
2
 by  2 2  
  225 ;       
(8)  1 1  3
2 2 0
Vw1  Vb ( cos   sin  )  R  2 L 2 L 
2 2
  315 ; Therefore, the current position and heading of the robot
(9) can be determined by integration. The result is
2 2
Vw1  Vb ( cos   sin  )  R 1 1 
2 2 x  r  1  2  3 
2 2 
VI. LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM 1 1 
y  r  1  3 
From the derivation of wheel velocity equation  2 2 
previously, it is obviously seen from Fig.5 that the robot r
velocity can be decomposed into perpendicular velocities robot  (1  2 )
2L
with respect to the reference robot frame. Thus, [9]
In order to localize the robot, the global position must be
Vbx  Vb cos  determined. Using heading of the robot, the position in local
Vby  Vb sin  (10) frame can be transform and updated in the global frame by
(14).
In addition, the relationship between the linear and the
angular velocity of the general omni-directional wheel is
 xnew   x previous   cos robot  sin robot   x 
   cos robot   y 
(14)
 ynew   y previous   sin robot
Vw  r (11)

where r is the radius of the omni-directional wheel and

 is the rotational velocity.

Figure 12. Robot in the global coordinate.

Figure 13. Robot’s control flowchart.

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 VII. ROBOT PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENT compensation and control of robot speed for moving upward
Our robot had dimensions of 50 cm x 50 cm, and 30 cm and downward with different angles.
in height with net weight of 10 kg. The driving omni wheels
were 100 mm in diameter. There were two batteries (12V,
2.2 Ah) for supplying to both control and motor, which they
can be used to run the cleaning robot for 30 minutes.
Firstly, the omni wheel robot was developed to test
mobility of the robot by driving it on the solar panel (2m x
1m, 300W module) as shown in Fig.14. The robot was
tested on different driving strategies and different inclined
angle up to 10º as shown in Fig.15.

Figure 16. Averaged moving speed of the omni wheel robot

TABLE I. RESULT OF INCLINED SOLAR PANEL CLIMBING TEST

Climbing Inclined Average Time Speed

Distance (mm)
Angle (degrees) (s) (m/s)
0° 1610 7.8 0.21
+3° 1610 (Up) 8.4 0.19
+5° 1610 (Up) 9.9 0.16
+8° 1610 (Up) 10.1 0.16
+10° 1610 (Up) 10.2 0.16
-3° 1610 (Down) 6.9 0.23
-5° 1610 (Down) 6.4 0.25
Figure 14. Omni wheel robot on a solar panel and mobility test on differnt
-8° 1610 (Down) 5.9 0.27
inclined angles.
-10° 1610 (Down) 4.7 0.34
Next, the robot moving acuracy was tested by travelling
on a square path (1 m x 1 m) on a flat surface (0º angle) (1)
with omni-wheel movement and (2) without omni-wheel
movement. Noticed that we used the same robot and the
same moving speed with two different moving strategies to
compare the movement errors and the total moving time. To
clearly compare the differences as in the actual operation, we
tested on the distance of 1 lap, 2 laps and 3 laps (1 laps = 4 m
distance).
Figure 15. Robot on 10º inclined angle. TABLE II. POSITION ERRORS AND MOVING TIME OF
OMI-WHEEL MOVEMENT

VIII. RESULT AND DISCUSSION Omni-wheel movement (Holonomic)

The mobility of the omni robot was tested on an inclined Average Average %Position Average
Number
Error X Error Y Error moving time
solar panel at 0º, 3º, 5º, 8º, and 10º angles. The robot moved of Laps
(mm) (mm) /Distance (sec)
about 1.6 m in distance, 5 times both in upward and
1 -2 72 1.8% 11.2
downward directions in order to determine its average
speeds. The results are shown in figure 16 and TABLE I. 2 39 17 0.5% 21.7
The maximum speed of robot was 0.34 m/s on -10 degrees
(moving downward) and the minimun speed was 0.16 m/s 3 30 -27 0.3% 31.8
on +10 degrees (moving upward). The speed was not
uniform because there were slipping on the wheels during
the test. However, the resulting speeds allowed

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 TABLE III. POSITION ERRORS AND MOVING TIME OF REFERENCES
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IX. CONCLUSION
http://www.damngeeky.com/2013/03/31/10071/autonomous-robot-
We have developed solar panel cleaning robot by design cleans-solar-panels-without-water.html.
a new driving system using omni wheels to improve
[9] J. Inthiam and C. Deelertpaiboon, “Self-localization and navigation of
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holonomic mobile robot using omni-directional wheel odometry,”
Our preliminary results showed that the robot can move
on a panel with 10º inclined angle with speed about 0.16- IEEE Reg. 10 Annu. Int. Conf. Proceedings/TENCON, vol. 2015–
0.34 m/s. If the robot was attached with a 50 cm long brush, Janua, pp. 1–5, 2015.
this robot could clean the solar panel with 0.125 sq.m/s or
450 sq.m/h.
Comparing the omni-wheel robot with a normal robot for
cleaning application, the omni-wheel robot saved 64% of
cleaning time when moving in a 1 m. × 1 m. square for 3
laps.
In the further, we will develop the omni wheel robot by
using high friction material for rolling wheels to reduce
slipping. In addition, the weigh of robot should be reduced
to increase battery’s lifetime for longer use. Also, the
compact design of cleaning brush for this robot should be
further studied.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Academic Enhancement
Department, King Mongkut’s University of Technology
North Bangkok (Grant no. KMUTNB-AED-G60-12). The
authors would like to thanks iRAP Robot (Invigorating
Robot Activity Project) for advice and machining support for
build this robot.

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