Modeling and Analysis of the Cleaning System of a Reconfigurable Tiling Robot

Cleaning robots have been gaining traction amongst various industries globally, with domestic floor cleaning robots being the most widespread. These robots usually employ brushes with a vacuum unit for dry cleaning purposes. For a self-reconfigurable tiling-based floor cleaning robot, hTetro, a modular sweeping module was developed. This robot consists of four rectangular blocks connected via passive hinges and each block consists of a steering unit with two conventional wheels following the differential drive principle. This paper presents the navigation and operational principle of the hTetro robotic platform and the detailed mechanical and hardware design of two different iterations of its cleaning module. The efficiency of these modules was numerically validated via Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis. Using the loading and boundary conditions derived from analytically formulated force analysis, Finite Element based static analysis and modal analysis of the cleaning module were carried out to determine the possible structural deformations, natural frequencies and stress patterns on each bristle and rolling brush. Through these simulations, we demonstrate the safe design of the roller brushes layout and bristle pattern and efficiency of the cleaning module. By deploying the platform in the lab setting and real food court environment, we verify the cleaning performance of the platform.