Design and Evaluation of Pneumatic Movement Mechanism Supported With Solar Panels

Solar energy for our world is a basic energy source, and nowadays the use of this energy in vehicles is not very common. the reason is not still efficient on moving objects (vehicles etc.) at existing technology. in this study, the movement mechanism is developed using the pneumatic artificial muscles and pneumatic circuit elements, and the used energy to generate the pressurized air required for this mechanism is provided by solar panels. two pcs compressors were used to pressurize the air tank and energy requirement of these compressors were provided with three dry type 12v 6ah batteries. for the charging batteries benefit from two pcs photovoltaic panels. at the end of the study, battery charge experiments to evaluate performance of solar panels, and motion experiments to control of movement mechanism were conducted. in charging experiments, batteries were recharged in 2.5 hours with150 watt solar panel obtained by a parallel connection of 60 and 90 watt solar panels. the best performance in motion experiments was achieved with weight of 50 kg. the vehicle using this weight was gotten far 50 meters with average of 0.45 m/sec speed, and it was finished this way at 112 seconds.