Journals / Osmaniye Korkut Ata Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü Dergisi / 2026 / Cilt: 9 Sayı: 4

Simulation and Control of Robot Operating System Based Mobile Solar Panel Cleaning and Broken Panel Area Detection

Robot İşletim Sistemi Tabanlı Güneş Paneli Temizleme ve Kırık Panel Alanı Algılama Robotunun Benzetim Çalışması ve Mobil Kontrolü

Said Müftü(PAMUKKALE ÜNİVERSİTESİ, TEKNOLOJİ FAKÜLTESİ)0000-0001-5621-7805
Pages
1984–2001
Publication Date
2026-09-09
🏛️Bibliographic metadata and full text access for this article are provided via DergiPark.
DergiPark Record ↗
✨

AI Summary & Key Takeaways

AI Insight
⚡ TL;DR(Too Long; Didn't Read)

These results demonstrate that the YOLOv8 algorithm in the ROS2 environment can detect broken areas on the panel and provide users with information on the PyQt interface.

📌 3 Key Takeaways

🎯
Objective & Hypothesis:Today, solar energy is a standout option for meeting the increasing energy demand, as it is both renewable and environmentally friendly.
📊
Key Findings & Data:The broken areas on the panel are visualized in real time on the designed interface with simulation in the ROS2 environment.
💡
Conclusion & Impact:These results demonstrate that the YOLOv8 algorithm in the ROS2 environment can detect broken areas on the panel and provide users with information on the PyQt interface.
🔬Design:Araştırma Makalesi
📍Scope:Comprehensive Sample
⚙️Variables:görüntü işleme · Haritalama · Mobil robot

Abstract

Today, solar energy is a standout option for meeting the increasing energy demand, as it is both renewable and environmentally friendly. The efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems, which convert light into electricity, depends on the amount of light that falls on the panel. Therefore, it is important to clean the panels regularly to remove dust and dirt, and to detect and repair broken panels. This study presents a solar panel cleaning robot designed according to current mobile robotic system technology. The robot moves along a designed trajectory to clean the factors affecting the efficiency of the solar panel, such as dust and bird droppings, which prevent the passage of solar rays. Another factor affecting solar panel efficiency is damage to the panels, such as cracks and breaks. These are detected during the cleaning process by the orbital movement of the mobile robot. The broken areas on the panel are visualized in real time on the designed interface with simulation in the ROS2 environment. Fracture detection using YOLOv8 produced successful results, and the mobile robot was simulated in the ROS2 environment. Three solar panels with a varying number of fractured and cracked regions were tested in the ROS2 environment, and successful results were observed. These results demonstrate that the YOLOv8 algorithm in the ROS2 environment can detect broken areas on the panel and provide users with information on the PyQt interface.

Özet

Günümüzde güneş enerjisi hem yenilenebilir hem de çevre dostu olması nedeniyle artan enerji talebini karşılamak için öne çıkan bir seçenektir. Işığı elektriğe dönüştüren fotovoltaik (PV) sistemlerin verimliliği, panele düşen ışık miktarına bağlıdır. Bu nedenle, toz ve kiri temizlemek ve kırık panelleri tespit edip onarmak için panelleri düzenli olarak temizlemek önemlidir. Bu çalışma, mobil hareket sistem teknolojisine göre tasarlanmış bir güneş paneli temizleme robotunun benzetim çalışmasını sunmaktadır. Robot, güneş ışınlarının geçişini engelleyen toz ve kuş pislikleri gibi güneş panelinin verimliliğini etkileyen faktörleri temizlemek için tasarlanmış bir yörünge boyunca mobil hareket etmektedir. Bu hareket boyunca güneş panelinin verimliliğini etkileyen kırık ve çatlaklar tespit edilir. Paneldeki kırık alanlar, ROS2 ortamında simülasyon ile tasarlanmış ara yüzde gerçek zamanlı olarak görselleştirilir. YOLOv8 kullanılarak yapılan kırık tespiti başarılı sonuçlar elde edilmiştir. ROS2 ortamında, kırık ve çatlak bölgelerin sayısı değişen üç güneş paneli ile testinde başarılı sonuçlar bulunmuştur. Bu sonuçlar, ROS2 ortamındaki YOLOv8 algoritmasının paneldeki kırık alanları tespit edebildiğini ve kullanıcılara PyQt ara yüzünde bilgi sağlayabildiğini göstermiştir.

🔖

Cite This Article

Müftü, S., Serez, E. (2026). Simulation and Control of Robot Operating System Based Mobile Solar Panel Cleaning and Broken Panel Area Detection. Osmaniye Korkut Ata Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü Dergisi, Cilt: 9 Sayı: 4, 1984–2001. https://doi.org/10.47495/okufbed.1825817

📄 Full Text PDF Viewer

📄

PDF görüntüleyici hazırlanıyor...

References (45)

  1. Airtouch, Advanced linear, water-free solar module cleaning. https://airtouchsolar.com/product/airtouch-at-4-0/ (accesed at 03.11.2024)
  2. Bayram AF., Nabiyev V. Detection of hidden camouflaged tanks based on deep learning: comparative analysis of state-of-the-art YOLO networks. Gümüşhane Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Dergisi 2023; 13(4): 1082-1093.
  3. Bdour M., Dalala Z., Al-Addous M., Radaideh A., Al-Sadi A. A comprehensive evaluation on types of microcracks and possible effects on power degradation in photovoltaic solar panels. Sustainability 2020; 12(16): 6416.
  4. Colab, Cloud-based Python environment https://colab.research.google.com/ (accesed at 06.12.2024) Çakir MA., Seyhan AK. Güneş enerjisi sistemlerinde yüzey kirlenmesini önlemek için yüzeye uygulanan yöntemler. Mühendislik Alanında Uluslararası Araştırmalar 2023; 43.
  5. Dijkstra E. Note on two problems in connexion with graphs. In Edsger Wybe Dijkstra: his life, work, and legacy 2022; 287-290.
  6. Ecoppia, Autonomous solar panel cleaning. https://www.ecoppia.com/technology (accesed at 03.11.2024)
  7. Gabor AM., Schneller EJ., Seigneur H., Rowell MW., Colvin D., Hopwood M., Davis KO. The impact of cracked solar cells on solar panel energy delivery. In 2020 47th IEEE photovoltaic specialists conference (PVSC) IEEE 2020; 0810-0813.
  8. Gajbhiye M., Adhale Y., Meshram P., Kakde P., Sahu A. Advanced solar panel cleaning robot with IoT-based automation. International Journal on Advanced Computer Engineering and Communication Technology 2025; 14(1): 231-236.
  9. Gao R., Park J., Hu X., Yang S., Cho K. Reflective noise filtering of large-scale point cloud using multi-position LiDAR sensing data. Remote Sensing 2021; 13(16): 3058.
  10. Güzelbay A. Determining the effects of solar panel manufacturing errors on energy efficiency. Master's thesis, Necmettin Erbakan University Turkey 2024.
  11. Hamza M., Jawad A., Chahine H., Abou G., M, Abou H., Saide G. Eco-bot: autonomous solar panel cleaner. In 2025 International Conference on Control, Automation, and Instrumentation IEEE 2025; 1-6.
  12. Hawkins DM. The problem of overfitting. Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences 2004; 44(1): 1-12.
  13. Hoang TN., Nguyen KH., Hua HK., Nguyen H., Quach LD. Optimizing YOLO performance for traffic light detection and end-to-end steering control for autonomous vehicles in Gazebo-ROS2. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications 2023; 14(7).
  14. Hudedmani MG., Joshi G., Umayal RM., Revankar AA. Comparative study of dust cleaning methods for the solar PV panels. Advanced Journal of Graduate Research 2017; 1(1): 24-29.
  15. Imamoglu MR., Sümer E., TemeltaËs HA. Comparison of local planner algorithms for a ROS-based omnidirectional mobile robot. TOK Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi 2023.
  16. İçel Y. Kirliliğin PV panel verimine etkisi ve panel temizleme yöntemleri. Interdisciplinary Studies on Contemporary Research Practices in Engineering in the 21st Century-VI 2024; 201.
  17. İşcan H., Tuncel E. Ros based path planning application with TurtleBot 3. European Journal of Science and Technology 2022; (34): 254-258.
  18. Kadir A, Bekmez A. Leader-follower based formation control of heterogeneous UAV-AGV multi-agent system. European Journal of Technique (EJT) 2023; 13(2): 241-248.
  19. Kaggle, Solar panel clean and faulty images. https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/pythonafroz/solar-panel-images (accesed at 06.12.2024)
  20. Kannan N., Vakeesan D. Solar energy for future world: A review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 2016; 62: 1092-1105.
  21. Kaplan Y., Göçen C. Diagonal L-shaped slotted antenna design for 2.4 GHz wireless applications with machine learning based reflection coefficient calculator GUI. Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science; 2022; 2(2): 87-93.
  22. Kılıç FÇ. Güneş enerjisi. Solar energy, ıts recent status in Turkey and production technologies. Mühendis ve Makina 2015; 56(671): 28-40.
  23. Li H., Li J., Guan X., Liang B., Lai Y., Luo X. Research on overfitting of deep learning. In 2019 15th international conference on computational intelligence and security (CIS) 2019; 78-81 IEEE.
  24. Maden H., Kamber ÖŞ. Improvement of apparatus used in cleaning robots according to customer feedback. Journal of Technical Sciences; 2020; 10(2): 26-36.
  25. Majd AE., Ekere NN. Crack initiation and growth in PV module interconnection. Solar Energy 2020; 206: 499-507. Make sense, image labeling. https://www.makesense.ai/ (accesed at 06.12.2024).
  26. Mando R., Özer E., İnner B. Autonomous mobile robot mapping and exploration of an indoor environment. In International Conference on Computing, Intelligence and Data Analytics Cham: Springer International Publishing 2022; 17-26
  27. Mehmet S., Aydın, İ. Detection of foreign objects around the railway line with YOLOv8. Computer Science (IDAP-2023) 2023; 19-23.
  28. Meijer, A. Real-time robot software framework on Raspberry PI using Xenomai and ROS2. Master's thesis, University of Twente. 2021.
  29. Murugaperumal K., Karuppiah N., Jain HS., Ganesh B., Shahitya B., Akshay G. Automated robotic system for efficient solar panel dust removal using GPS-based navigation. In E3S Web of Conferences 2025; 619:01014.
  30. Mutluer M., Erat AA. new intelligent system design for cleaning the photovoltaic solar panel surface. International Journal of Energy Applications and Technologies 2019; 6(1): 8-16.
  31. Myyas R., Al-Dabbasa M. Tostado-Véliz, M, Jurado, F. A novel solar panel cleaning mechanism to improve performance and harvesting rainwater. Solar Energy 2022; 237: 19-28.
  32. Öziç MÜ., Yılmaz AS., Sandıraz Hİ., Estanto BHA. Comparative study of breast mass detection using YOLOv8 deep learning model in various data scenarios on multi-view digital mammograms. Bitlis Eren University Journal of Science 2023; 12(4): 1212-1225.
  33. Piliougine M., Carretero J., Sidrach-de-Cardona M., Montiel D., Sánchez-Friera P. Comparative analysis of the dust losses in photovoltaic modules with different cover glasses. In Proceedings of 23rd European Solar Energy Conference 2008; 2698-2700.
  34. Pyla R., Pandalaneni V., Raju PJN. Design and development of swarm AGV’s alliance for search and rescue operations. Journal of Robotics and Control (JRC) 2023; 4(6): 791-807.
  35. Quigley M., Gerkey B., Smart WD. Programming robots with ROS: a practical introduction to the Robot Operating System. O'Reilly Media Inc 2015.
  36. Rahman A. Solar panel surface defect and dust detection: Deep learning approach. Journal of Imaging, 2025;11(9): 287.
  37. Rohith G., Manish DS., Narasimhan AR., Dhavale AU., John RR. SparkNet-A solar panel fault detection deep learning model. Ieee Access. 2025.
  38. Tsakalakos L. Introduction to photovoltaic physics, applications, and Technologies. Nanotechnology for Photovoltaics; CRC press 2010; 1-48.
  39. SolarClean, autonomous solar panel cleaning robot. https://solarcleano.com/tr/product/solar-panel-cleaning-robot-f1 (accesed at 03.11.2024)
  40. Ultralytics. YOLO object recognition models https://hub.ultralytics.com/ (accesed at 06.12.2024)
  41. Yang Y., Azumi T. Exploring real-time executor on Ros2. In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems (ICESS) 2020; 1-8, IEEE.
  42. Yanılmaz S., Türkoğlu M., Aslan M. Detection of hotspot defects in solar power plants with YOLO algorithms. Firat University Journal of Engineering Sciences 2024; 36(1): 121-132.
  43. Vasiljev P., Borodinas S., Bareikis R., Struckas A. Ultrasonic system for solar panel cleaning. Sensors and Actuators A: Physical 2013; 200: 74-78.
  44. Venkateswari R., Sreejith S. Factors influencing the efficiency of photovoltaic system. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 2019; 101: 376-394.
  45. Zhao X., Yang Z., Schwertfeger S. Mapping with reflection-detection and utilization of reflection in 3d lidar scans. In 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR-IEEE) 2020; 27-33