Building a Robotic Vacuum Cleaner

[geraldoon]

I need to build a robotic vacuum cleaner that requires minimally 20kPa suction pressure, and is able to clean a 1000sqft area within a single charge of the battery. How do I first calculate the motor specs required to produce that suction pressure and the battery that is able to last the entire 1000 sqft cleaning. Any help would be appreciated

Mentor note: Moved to homework forum from EE forum.

 

[russ_watters]

This is going to be extremely difficult to do with (evidently) no background in engineering. You're not even describing or approaching the first problem correctly.

A vacuum cleaner uses a vacuum pump, which is like a high pressure fan/blower. So you need both a pressure and a flow rate as the sizing criteria. Where did you get the pressure?

Second, there are a lot of vacuum cleaners out there. You should be studying how they work.

What is this project for? Is it a school project? If so, at what level?

 

[Baluncore]

Welcome to PF.

The solution requires that you specify the width and speed of the robot. That tells you how long it will take to cover 1000 m².

The next issue is the flow rate of air while it is working. What suction pump will you use? You will need to know the pressure against volume curve for the vacuum pump, to find the operating point or range.
Power in watts is pressure in Pa, multiplied by the volume per second in m³.
The power gives you the minimum motor size required.

You then know the time and the power, so you can compute the minimum energy required in joules, which is the time in seconds multiplied by the power in watts. The energy gives you the minimum battery capacity required.

You will need to design the pick-up mouth parts, so it follows the surface of the floor, without too much variation in the gap or the airflow.