Design And Research On Control System Of Mini Snow Remover Based On Smartphone

The heavy snowfall in high latitude areas such as north of China and Europe always lasts for months,and the snow cover in small areas like courtyards always brings people inconvenience.So far,snow is removed by hand or mini snow remover in small areas,while the later one is more efficient and costs less labor,therefore mini snow remover is gradually popularized all over the world.However,the existing mini snow remover lacks cab and the users have to be exposed in icy weather when operating these machines,the working condition is relatively poor.The smartphone has been widely used in daily life,currently,few studies of remote control system for mini snow remover based on smartphone has been reported.However,smartphone control technology has been widely explored in mobile robots,which has provided an invaluable reference for this project.Therefore,to improve people's living quality,it is of great significance by studying the solutions to improve the automation of mini snow remover which allows users to manipulate these machines while staying in a cozy place such as a warm room.This paper developed a control APP for the existing mini snow remover based on Android smartphone.A controller based on PIC18F46K22 microcontroller was designed,a Wi-Fi module and a camera were installed on the snow remover.The designed control system mainly includes android APP,controller,Wi-Fi module,camera,walking motor,snow-throwing direction controlling motor,snow-collecting motor and battery.The android APP was designed to receive the working video and send control codes;the controller received command codes from Wi-Fi module and controlled the corresponding motors;the controller limited the maximum current of snow-collecting motor by using IGBT and reduced walking speed synchronously to prevent snow-collecting motor from damage caused by overloading;the controller used MEMS gyroscope to detect walking deviation from the desired track,and rectified the deviation of forward-walking to achieve a decent manipulation.The test results showed that the mini snow remover can be controlled successfully by using the designed smartphone control system via Wi-Fi network,the video can display smoothly;the controller can effectively respond to orders from the user and realized effects of snow-collecting current limiting,walking speed-regulation,and deviation-rectification.When the current of snow-collecting motor reached 30 A,the controller reduced the voltage to limit the current and set the locked rotor current to 32A;when the current of snow-collecting motor was over 30 A,the controller reduced the speed of walking motor from 160r/min to 47 r/min gradually within 110 seconds and shut down the walking motor at 120s;during the 10 meter long deviation-rectification test,the maximum deviation was 0.5m.