Suction-port Position Control for Vacuum Working Robot to Improve Working Efficiency

When cleaning the dirt pile around the conveyor with a vacuum car, there are problems that workers collide with falling iron ore and suffer health problems by breathing in dust. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a robot that performs the cleaning with a vacuum car instead of workers. Many studies on robots that perform cleaning work have discussed about automation and cleaning efficiency such as automatic mapping and coverage path planning. However, there is no discussion about cleaning efficiency and automation of robots that can perform the cleaning with a vacuum car. To perform the cleaning efficiently, it is necessary to avoid cleaning the same place several times and leaving uncleaned areas because it increases the cleaning time. Therefore, in this study, we first formulated the area where the hose sucks the dirt pile. Then, we proposed a method to derive the optimal path that minimizes the cleaning time. Furthermore, we developed a control system that realizes the optimal path. Finally, we conducted a verification experiment assuming an aisle next to the conveyor. In the experiment, it was confirmed that the coincidence rate with the optimal path was about 70% by the suction-port position control system.