Omni-directional mobile robot for floor cleaning

An omni-directional mobile robot for floor cleaning is presented. The purpose is to use this type of robot to do cleaning work instead of human being in narrow areas and crowded places such as houses, offices and airports. The robot consists of moving system, vacuum cleaning system, sensing system, power-detecting system, computer control system and wire-less remote control system. It can be controlled by semi-autonomous model and teleoperation model. Also it has the functions of pivot around, obstacle avoidance, automatic power management and efficient cleaning. The locomotion velocity of this robot is obtained by synthesis of four velocities of the Swedish wheels. The condition of the kinematic equation and the moving mechanism is studied. Furthermore, the key controlling parameters concerning the equation are discussed and given. The efficient cleaning system also has a characteristic of air route switching automatically, and the experiments are shown that the vacuum pump for cleaning can work efficiently and even dust, pieces of wastepaper and coins can be sucked in easily. Through the tests for moving speed, error of moving trajectory, obstacle avoidance and quality of cleaning, the robot has the performances such as smooth omni-directional moving, reliable controlling, better obstacle avoidance and good cleaning capacity.