The Clean Up

The Clean Up is an autonomous device used to clean the walls of saltwater fish tanks. The device utilizes the force of water out of a hose to both clean the walls and propel itself along the wall geometry.

The Problem

The walls of saltwater tanks become dirty overtime as a result of algae buildup. To clean these walls requires many work hours from a trained diver. Our team worked to design an autonomous cleaner that could clean these walls with as little human interaction as possible while maitining safety of the animals within the tank.

Prototypes

Three potential design directions were identified. The vertical scrubbing design (left) would follow the base of the wall and clean up and down as it slowly moved by. The autonomous random path cleaner (middle) was a prexisitng product we hoped to modify to clean the tanks curved wall geometry. The ROV (right) was a remote controlled cleaner that a user could manuever to clean the walls.

Testing

To create a mock testing environment, I build a test frame of the same radius of curvature and coefficient of friction as the tank the device is to be designed for (left). The frame was brought to a pool where we could test the prototypes. Based on results from testing, we selected the vertical scrubbing design because it could confrom to wall geometry autonomously and required no electricity underwater.

Final Prototype

The final protoype was designed to be propelled by the force of water from a pump above the water line (right). The pump could produce the forces needed to clean the walls while also moving the device along the base of the wall (middle and top right). The front bumper utilized a wooden block with a piece of low friction plastic to move seamlessly alsong the wall, making the transition from staight to curved surface.