Research On Path Planning Method Of Duct-cleaning Robot

With the developing of society and technology, the central air-conditioning ductcleaning robot, as a special service mobile robot, has been paid more and moreattention successfully, and great importance has been attached to the centralair-conditioning duct cleaning robots which has been applied into many fields. Inorder to achieve the automatic cleaning of central air-conditioning duct cleaningrobots, path-planning is a key technology that must be overcome. Taking thecharacteristics of the central air-conditioning ducts and the model of salesmanproblem into consideration, this paper mainly focus on the obstacle-avoidance withoptimal traversal path planning of chassis of duct-cleaning robot based on ant colonyalgorithm and the path planning of cleaning actuator. The main contents of this paperare listed as follows:1. Path planning of chassis of central duct-cleaning robots. Firstly the gridmethod has been used to establish the environment model in the case of knowing theglobal structure of the central air-conditioning ducts. Secondly, after the modeling ofenvironment, applying ant colony algorithm to solve the problem of path planning ofchassis of duct-cleaning robot twice with the introduction of the traveling salesmanproblem(TSP). The algorithm is simulated in the Matlab simulation environment, andthe results prove its feasibility. Lastly, the local obstacle-avoidance path planning ofthe chassis of duct-cleaning robots is studied under the premise of camera’sperceiving the environment.2. Path planning of cleaning actuator of duct-cleaning robots. Slicing the centralair-conditioning ducts into many parts with the same length, and grid method is stillapplied to establish the environment model which describes the environmentalsituation in the different duct sections. In the grid model, the method of going in theclockwise direction along the border is used to plan the path of duct-cleaning robots’cleaning actuator. And the cases that are possible to be encountered in the process ofcleaning actuator’s path planning are analyzed in details. Besides, the simulationexperiment is been conducted with Matlab, the result of which demonstrates thefeasibility.3. On the basis of path planning of the chassis and cleaning actuator of duct-cleaningrobots, the advancing process of the chassis of duct-cleaning robots is linked with the cleaning movement of cleaning actuator in the3-D central air-conditioning ducts, andthe motion trail of cleaning actuator is obtained in the Matlab simulationenvironment.