A Cleaning Robot for Greenhouse Roofs

The growth of hydroponic vegetables cultivated in a greenhouse is influenced by the photosynthesis process. Sunlight, an important factor to grow crops with high productivity, is blocked by the plastic sheetings of the greenhouse roof and their cleanliness. A layer of dust can build up and needs to be removed. In the traditional method, cleaners have to climb onto the high-level roof and use brushes to clean the plastic sheets. It is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and the cleaners are prone to accidents. There is a need for some tools to clean the roof instead of cleaning by workers. Therefore, a cleaning robot for greenhouse roof is developed in this study. The light-weight frames of four sponge wiper blades are used to clean the roof sheetings in wet condition. The robot can move along the greenhouse via a guideway on top of the roof by a guiding module. The average moving speed that provide good cleaning quality is 1.3 meters per minute. The cleaning quality is very good and the dust can be removed by about 85-95%. Additionally, the proposed cleaning robot helps the worker clean the roof efficiently without any damage to the plastic sheeting and it can clean the roof twice as fast as manual cleaning.