Infosys designed and built a solar panel robot for dry and wet cleaning operations on solar panels with state-of-the-art integrated vision system. It resulted in an on-demand wet cleaning cycle leading to improved operational efficiencies. Infosys, through its robotics and autonomous systems center of excellence, ideated and created an advanced solar panel robot platform with robotics and vision-assisted technologies. The platform is integrated with vision systems and on-demand algorithms, resulting in unmanned efficient cleaning operations of solar panels with reduced water consumption. It automates wet and dry cleaning of the solar panel and minimizes the effort required in operations and monitoring. The wet cleaning feature uses vision-assisted technologies to detect dirt and debris on the panels. Wet cleaning is performed only in the identified areas, reducing water consumption substantially.
The Infosys Solar Panel Cleaning Robot Platform is cloud-ready with features like fleet management, IoT enablement, smart vision-assisted dry and wet cleaning, integrated wipe system and water tank, multi dry brush for dry cleaning, vision-based cleaning pattern, and solar panel health monitoring.
The Kaynes Group partnered with Infosys to take the solar panel cleaning robot Kleinbot to market. Kaynes industrialized, manufactured, and marketed it under the license of Infosys Solar Panel Robot Platform. Kleinbot offers an in-built artificial intelligence platform that recognizes bird or bee droppings and performs wet cleaning automatically at the precise locations.
The first commercial Kleinbot will be deployed in a prominent solar farm in India shortly.
Key Challenges
- Design and development of an industrial-grade robotic platform from concept to a matured product, adhering to stringent requirements and timelines
- Integration with many standard industrial-grade solar panels
- Modular design with minimal infrastructure changes in solar farms
- Develop mechanical, hardware, vision systems, and software stacks, followed by integration to achieve precise operations with improved cleaning efficiency
- Optimize brushes and integrate on-demand wet cleaning module as a modular entity
- Detect dirt and debris on the panels. Perform wet cleaning only in the identified areas resulting in reduced water usage
- Mature the technology demonstration to a commercially viable product with an optimized bill of material
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The Solution
The Infosys Solar Panel Robot Platform — an advanced technology with on-demand wet cleaning systems
The Infosys Solar Panel Robot Platform uses advanced technologies like:
- Autonomous cleaning operation
- Dust and dirt detection using vision systems
- On-demand dry and wet cleaning system
- Integrated smart sensor systems
- Software and algorithms for autonomous navigation
Benefits
- A commercially viable and mature solar panel robot for solar farms
- Kleinbot – An intelligent on-demand solar panel cleaning robot
Leveraging advanced robotic platforms for industrial use
A system with a linear speed of 0.2 m/s, dry brush speed of 120 RPM, and wet brush speed at 200 RPM with a cleaning rate of 1.8 m2/min.
Integrated with advanced sensor systems to enable safer and precise cleaning operations remotely with industry-standard accuracy and performance.
Multiple redundancies to ensure safe operations in an unmanned environment.
Smart vision-assisted dry and wet cleaning, integrated wipe system and water tank, multi dry brush for dry cleaning and vision-based cleaning, enabling exact consumption of water with higher cleaning efficiency.
Unique system that is AI-based, cloud-ready with smart integrated advanced cleaning technology.
