Vibration reduction of flexible solar panel in wheeled mobile robots based on robot trajectory planning

A solar-powered robot is a mobile robot powered completely or significantly by direct solar energy. The sun's energy is converted into electric energy by solar panels mounted on the robot. These solar panels are required to be light, because of the important demands for low-energy consumption. As a result of the flexibility of elements of the panels, undesirable low-frequency vibration may occur when the robot moves on a rough terrain. In this paper, a new method for stabilization of solar panels vibration base on trajectory planning for articulated mobile robot is presented. The dynamics of solar panels attached to the robot is derived using Kane’s method. The attitude and configuration of a rover as a function of the terrain on which it moves is determined using inverse kinematics of the robot. The attitude and configuration of a rover is required to approximate the domain of vibration by derived dynamics equations. Base on this approximation, a trajectory planning algorithm is presented that can reduce vibration without significant decrease in the velocity of the robot. The proposed method is simulated for a six-wheeled mobile robot with rocker-bogie structure The obtained results show that the algorithm stable the domain of vibration in allowable area and do not decrease the velocity of the robot significantly.