The Development of Sun-Tracking System Using Image Processing

This article presents the development of an image-based sun position sensor and the algorithm for how to aim at the Sun precisely by using image processing. Four-quadrant light sensors and bar-shadow photo sensors were used to detect the Sun’s position in the past years. Nevertheless, neither of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hong-Cheng Huang, Cheng-Dar Lee, Hong-Yih Yeh
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2013-04-01
Series:Sensors
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/13/5/5448
Description
Summary:This article presents the development of an image-based sun position sensor and the algorithm for how to aim at the Sun precisely by using image processing. Four-quadrant light sensors and bar-shadow photo sensors were used to detect the Sun’s position in the past years. Nevertheless, neither of them can maintain high accuracy under low irradiation conditions. Using the image-based Sun position sensor with image processing can address this drawback. To verify the performance of the Sun-tracking system including an image-based Sun position sensor and a tracking controller with embedded image processing algorithm, we established a Sun image tracking platform and did the performance testing in the laboratory; the results show that the proposed Sun tracking system had the capability to overcome the problem of unstable tracking in cloudy weather and achieve a tracking accuracy of 0.04°.
ISSN:1424-8220