Development of a Leaf-Sweeping Robot

Leaf-blowers are used widely to help street sweepers quickly blow away leaves. However, residents often suffer from the loud noise of leaf-blowers used in cities. The objective of this research was to develop a leaf-sweeping robot to replace the leaf-blowers. The controller of the robot is composed of Arduino MEGA 2560 with an ESP-12E wireless module. The robot was designed to sweep leaves based on a blower, an air duct, and a sweeping mechanism. The air duct design parameters were determined using the Taguchi methods. There are eight factors for the design: the number of vent holes, the orientation of the air duct, the orientation of the slant plate, and the size of the vent holes at five different sections. We found the optimal parameters, which can generate 2.85 m/s wind speed on average, in terms of the wind velocity by using the analysis of variance. Further, we compared the robot's noise level with a typical leave-blower―the robot's noise was lower by 17 decibels. This robot provides a viable solution for cleaning fallen leaves.