  Accumulation of dust on the surface of solar panels reduces the amount of
radiation reaching it. This leads to loss in generated electric power and
formation of hotspots which would permanently damage the solar panel. This
project aims at developing an autonomous vacuum cleaning method which can be
used on a regular basis to maximize the lifetime and efficiency of a solar
panel. This system is implemented using two subsystems namely a Robotic Vacuum
Cleaner and a Docking Station. The Robotic Vacuum Cleaner uses a two stage
cleaning process to remove the dust from the solar panel. It is designed to
work on inclined and slippery surfaces. A control strategy is formulated to
navigate the robot in the required path using an appropriate feedback
mechanism. The battery voltage of the robot is determined periodically and if
it goes below a threshold, it returns to the docking station and charges itself
automatically using power drawn from the solar panels. The operation of the
robotic vacuum cleaner has been verified and relevant results are presented.
The DC Charging circuit in the docking station is simulated in Proteus
environment and is implemented in hardware. An economical, robust Robotic
Vacuum Cleaner which can clean arrays of Solar panels (with or without
inclination) interlinked by rails and recharge itself automatically at a
docking station is designed and implemented.
