Dual-Axis Panel Design
Last updated: 4/27/22
This page contains the mechanical and electrical schematics for the dual-axis panel controlled by the reinforcement learning agent.
Panel Design Requirements
To enable the reinforcement learning agent to learn from the environment and optimize total energy output in a period of time t, it needs to be able to directly control the dual-axis panel to adjust and explore new panel positions based on environmental inputs. To enable this, the below requirements were created:
the panel shall be controlled by two independent servo motors to control the pitch and yaw of the panel
the panel shall not have any photoresistor-based inputs (traditional dual-axis tracking method)
the panel must be able to rotate 180° around both the x (pitch) and z (yaw) axis
Panel Design
I arrived at the below design considering the above requirements. The first image is an exploded view of all the components, followed by an assembled view.
Exploded view of the dual-axis panel design
Assembled view of the dual-axis panel design
Built Panel
Below are images of the panel fully assembled: