Optimization of Vehicle Windshield Cleaning: A Novel Horizontal Wiper System Based on Ball Screw Drive

Conventional types of wipers are characterized by some consistent disadvantages, such as huge uncleared blind spots (up to 40 percent of the target area), limited wiping functionality, and great dynamic visual interference. Due to the intensive full-field visibility demands of autonomous driving, this paper will introduce a new linear reciprocating wiper that will be driven by a ball screw. In particular, one of the prototypes of such a system is designed based on a Dongfeng heavy-duty truck, according to which the traditional oscillatory movement is converted into a horizontal directional movement by a ball screw. This is powered by a motor of 24 V drive with a worm gear reducer to give the force needed to achieve the horizontal reciprocating motion of the wiper blade assembly over the windshield. For the intelligent control module of the proposed lateral linear wiper system, a special intelligent control system is developed based on the principle of CAN bus communication and multi-sensor fusion. Both a rain sensor and a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) algorithm allow the system to achieve adaptive control of wiper speed and apply to various modes, including intermittent wiping, low-speed wiping, and high-speed wiping.