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Surface Cleaning Force Control of Rotating Brushes
for an Air Duct Cleaning Robot
Wootae Jeong
1
, Seung-Woo Jeon
2
, Duckshin Park
1
and Soon-Bark Kwon
1
1
Eco-Transport Research Division, Korea Railroad Research Institute,Gyeonggi-do,Uiwang, Korea
2
Department of Virtual Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea
Keywords: Force Control, Compliance Device, Kinematic Analysis, Service Robot, Air Duct Cleaning.
Abstract: Due to the complexity of the air duct and ventilation system, removing accumulated dusts and particular
matters at inner surface of air duct system becomes key issue for improving indoor air quality and
maintaining the green environment of underground facilities. Although various tools and technologies for
air duct cleaning have been developed, mechanical brushing method is evaluated as the most effective
method in cleaning duct and ventilation system. Therefore, automotive duct cleaning robot with rolling
brushes has been developed in this study. In particular, by adding compliant force feedback sensors to the
rolling brushes, the developed cleaning robot can control the cleaning force consistantly between brush and
duct surface. Force feedback control algorithm has been also developed and evaluated through control
simulation tools.
1 INTRODUCTION
The HVAC(Heating, Ventilating, and Air
Conditioning) system that supplies fresh and clean
air from outdoor environment has been utilized in
most of closed spaces such as modern buildings and
subway facilities where people work and spend most
of their daily hours. Due to the complexity of the air
duct and ventilation system and long period of
cleaning and maintenance, various types of
infiltrated particles and dusts are accumulated at
inner surface of the duct without being exhausted.
Figure 1 shows pictures of before and after cleaning
duct. In general, the accumulated dusts and particles
flow into the living space and influence on the
human respiratory system and health. In addition,
the accumulated dusts and particles can reduce the
efficiency of the air conditioning and heating of the
HVAC system reported by Brosseau et al., 2000
Furthermore, the closed structure of ducts provides a
good propagating circumstance of microorganisms
including viruses and bacteria. Recently some
contraries have established the regulation and
guideline for ventilation system cleaning (FiSIAQ,
2001), however, many countries still do not have
legal regulations about cleaning ventilation systems.
Recently, the research and development of duct
Figure 1: Before cleaning Air duct and After Cleaning.
cleaning technology has been conducted widely as
concerns and requests of improving air quality are
increasing. In fact, duct cleaning techniques can be
classified as a dry method such as blowing out with
compressed air and scraping out using mechanical
brush and a wet method spraying water or chemical
solution. Especially, the mechanical brushing is
widely used because of its higher cleaning efficiency
and accessibility. Various types of robots with
mechanical cleaning tools have been developed and
used for specific air duct cleaning. However, many
manual cleaning methods are still broadly being
used in cleaning the HVAC systems.
Therefore, in order to provide more efficient and
autonomous mobile cleaning robot platform, a new
mobile robot equipped with mechanical rotating
brushes and sensors has been developed as shown in
Figure 2. In particular, the duct cleaning robot can
clean four sides of inner duct surface simultaneously
453
Jeong W., Jeon S., Park D. and Kwon S..
Surface Cleaning Force Control of Rotating Brushes for an Air Duct Cleaning Robot .
DOI: 10.5220/0004591104530457
In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO-2013), pages 453-457
ISBN: 978-989-8565-71-6
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)