System integration of a solar sensor and a spherical parallel manipulator for a 3-axis solar tracker platform design

This paper presents the authors' ongoing work on designing a novel 3-axis solar tracker platform utilizing a 3-DOF spherical parallel manipulator with revolute joints and a solar sensor. The selected solar sensor and the SPM configuration are described in details. A novel approach is proposed for the SPM platform orientation estimation based on solar sensor measurements employing trigonometric identities and quaternion rotation representation. The proposed approach is experimentally verified using a SPM 3D-printed prototype equipped with a solar and an orientation sensors. It is assumed that the proposed concept for a novel 3-axis solar tracker platform can further applied to design novel mobile solar tracking systems.