Abstract
Solar thermal systems require precision mirror concentrators. Their shape is expensive to manufacture and difficult to control. Here, a concept is proposed to control the shape of a solar concentrator using parallel binary actuators embedded in a mirror’s structure. The actuators can only move a set distance between two bi-stable positions. Since the actuators have fixed displacements and the kinematic parameters of the hyper-redundant mechanism are not well known, determining the actuator inputs to correct a mirror shape error is a challenge. In this paper, a linearized kinematic model is developed that can be used for control. System models and laboratory experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.
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Acknowledgements
The support of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, through the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and KFUPM is acknowledged. The authors also thank Yuanyu Chen and Teresa Gomez for their assistance in this work and the Cyprus Institute for its partial financial support of Ms. Bilton.
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Bilton, A.M., Dubowsky, S. (2012). Inverse Kinematics for the Control of Hyper-Redundant Binary Mechanisms with Application to Solar Concentrator Mirrors. In: Lenarcic, J., Husty, M. (eds) Latest Advances in Robot Kinematics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4620-6_53
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4620-6_53
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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