Senior design of an autonomous ledge cleaner

We designed and developed an autonomous robot to sweep and clean ledges. The new engineering building at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS has ledges in the atrium that collect dust and paper airplanes (Fig. 1). One method to clean these ledges is to use a long pole with a dust mop on the end; these become unwieldy when the length extends beyond 10 feet (3 m), and the third story ledge is approximately 20 feet high (6 m), as seen in Fig. 1. Another problem is a deep ledge, as seen for the second story in Fig. 1; a long pole would have to be articulated to reach some portions of the surface, again making it unwieldy. Another method would be to use a flying drone to sweep the ledges, but university regulations ban flying drones inside buildings. Another possibility would be to modify a robotic floor cleaner, but this design effort would be significant. Our design of an autonomous robot presents a solution to solve this problem of cleaning difficult to reach ledges.