Abstract
A dust accumulated on a solar array panel of a planetary exploration robot is of particular concern since the dust shades the sunlight and decreases the power generated by the solar array panel. Recent studies in the dust removal technique has proposed an electrodynamic screen as an energy efficient devise for such application, however, an open issue is to supply a power for those devices in a simple and cable-less way. One possible solution for this issue is to exploit a kinetic energy harvester as an energy source. The work described in this paper experimentally demonstrate a vibrationbased kinetic energy harvester towards dust removal for a mobile robot. A power generated by the vibration-based kinetic energy harvester inherently decreases as a vibration frequency applied to the harvester being apart from the specific frequency of the harvester. Therefore, a cantilever mechanism is developed to convert a frequency of ambient vibration to the specific frequency of the harvester so that the power generated from the harvester mounted on the cantilever would increase. In this paper, the proof of concept for the cantilever mechanism for the vibration-based kinetic energy harvester is experimentally confirmed in a field test using a mobile robot in rough terrain. In the field test, dynamic characteristics of solar array panels mounted on the robot is also measured. This measurement clearly indicates that the tip of solar array panel is favorable for the harvester to be mounted since the tip excites its vibration and increases enough power for an operation of a dust removal device.
