Control and Aerodynamic Design of a Solar Road Vehicle with Articulated Surfaces

Abstract

The automobile industry is critical to modern society. Simultaneously, the constant release of toxic emissions such as greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is detrimental to health and the environment. Vehicles which exploit cleaner energy sources would be preferable to reduce the horrific scale of human-initiated damage such as climate change. However, solar road vehicles—though designed and fabricated by some—have not reached a sufficient level to be production-worthy. The low efficiency of solar cells and the high energy demands of the average land vehicle are irreconcilable for most manufacturers using industry methods and design precedent. Therefore, this work centres around the design and control of a solar road vehicle which fundamentally breaks from the mould of the typical road vehicle design—a vehicle which employs extensive articulated surfaces (dubbed "solar wings") which can be angled to directly face the sun, thereby maximising solar irradiation. A solar tracker using Bayesian inference achieving promising results in both convergence and accuracy is presented. Additionally, a systematic method for optimizing a solar road vehicle with solar wings is developed and documented.