A photovoltaic panel cleaning robot with a lightweight YOLO v8

Cleaning PV (photovoltaic) panels is essential for a PV station, as dirt or dust reduces the effective irradiation of solar energy and weakens the efficiency of converting solar energy into free electrons. The inconsistent (cleaning efficacy) and unsafe (summarized voltage and current) manual method is a challenge for a PV station. Therefore, this paper develops a cleaning robot with PV detection, path planning, and action control. Firstly, a lightweight Mobile-VIT (Mobile Vision Transformer) model with a Self-Attention mechanism was used to improve YOLOv8 (You Only Look Once v8), resulting in an accuracy of 91.08% and a processing speed of 215 fps (frames per second). Secondly, an A* and a DWA (Dynamic Window Approach) path planning algorithm were improved. The simulation result shows that the time consumption decreased from 1.19 to 0.66 s and the Turn Number decreased from 23 to 10 p (places). Finally, the robot was evaluated and calibrated in both indoor and outdoor environments. The results showed that the algorithm can successfully clean PV arrays without manual control, with the rate increasing by 23% after its implementation. This study supports the maintenance of PV stations and serves as a reference for technical applications of deep learning, computer vision, and robot navigation.