JOURNAL OF ADVANCEMENT IN

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

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Research Article Open Access

Automatic Rain-Sensing Wiper System for 4-Wheeler Vehicles

P.Naresh1*, A.V.Hari Babu2
1,2,
P Naresh , Asst professor in ME DEPT, AVR&SVR College of Engg&Tech,Nandyal. India.
*Corresponding author: P.Naresh, E.mail : [email protected]
Received: November 12, 2015, Accepted: December 18, 2015, Published: December 18, 2015
ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, the automotive industry has aggressively researched ways to exploit modern computing and electronic
advances in the development of safety, reliability, and entertainment technologies for vehicles. With drivers exposed to an ever
increasing number of distractions, automatic rain-sensing wiper systems become an even more appealing feature, as they work to
minimize the time the driver must take his/her hands off the wheel. Most traditional systems offer intermittent as well as variable
speed operation. The traditional wiper system however requires driver constant attention in adjusting the wiper speed. Traditional
windshield wiper speed constantly varies according to time and vehicle’s speed. Because the manual adjustment of the wiper
distracts driver's attention, which may be a direct cause accidents. This is review paper for automatic wiper in various method and
also explain the basic skeleton for adjust speed of wiper automatically cording to the amount of water on the windshield and in
addition with also in advance removal of moisture inside the car while raining. The system activates the wiper to operate in full
automatic mode and detect moister using CAN technology.
Keyword: Rain-Sensing Wiper System, automotive industry,

INTRODUCTION systems use an optical sensor to detect the presence of water on

A windscreen wiper or windshield wiper is a device used to the windshield, and relay wiper control data to the vehicle's
remove rain and debris from a windscreen. Almost all motor body control module (BCM). Unfortunately, these optical rain
vehicle, including trains, aircraft and watercraft, are sensors suffer from a small sensing area, are prone to
equipped with such wipers, which are usually an essential false-positives, and are too expensive to be included as standard
requirement. A wiper generally consists of an arm, pivoting at equipment in most vehicles.
one end and with a long rubber blade attached to the other. The Over the past two decades, the automotive industry has
blade is swung back and forth over the glass, pushing water aggressively researched ways to exploit modern computing
from its surface. The speed is normally adjustable, with and electronic advances in the development of safety,
several continuous speeds and often one or more reliability, and entertainment technologies. Despite this,
"intermittent"settings. Most automobilesuse two automatic rain-sensing wiper systems are relatively uncommon
synchronized radial type arms. It takes a lot of force to in modern vehicles for a number of reasons. They are often too
accelerate the wiper blades back and forth across the expensive, too unsightly, or too unreliable to be desired in new
windshield so quickly. In order to generate this type of automobiles. Many attempts have been made at constructing
force, a worm gear is used on the output of a small electric an effective, reliable, and cheap rain detection and wiper
motor. control system for vehicles speed and intermittent interval
The worm gear reduction can multiply the torque of the automatically according to the amount of rain. To measure
motor by about 50 times, while slowing the output speed of the the amount of water usually use optical sensor. In this type of
electric motor by 50 times as well. The output of the gear sensors uses the fact that the refraction angle and the amount
reduction operates a linkage that moves the wipers back and of reflection of the light are different when the 2 windshield
forth. Inside the motor/gear assembly is an electronic circuit is wet. Even though optical sensors are used widely they have
that senses when the wipers are in their down they are some disadvantage. One of disadvantages is the sensitivity to
parked at the bottom of the windshield, and then cuts the external light. Another problem is occurs when car drive at
power to the motor. This circuit also parks the wipers night or gone through tunnel and even in underground parking.
between wipes when they are on their intermittent setting. For this many systems still activate the wiper when the car
With drivers exposed to an ever increasing number of comes out of tunnels or underground parking lot. Another
distractions, automatic rain-sensing wiper. shortfall, maybe a major one is that the sensing area is a
systems become an even more appealing feature, as they work relatively small portion of windshield. Hence the system
to minimize the time the driver must take his/her hands off the operates only with limited area. The wiper system may fail to
wheel. These systems detect droplets of rain on the windshield activate when there are some raindrops on the driver’s line of
and automatically turn on and adjust the wiper system in sight, but not on the sensing area. They are often too expensive,
accordance to the level of precipitation. Current rain-sensing

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too unsightly, or too unreliable to be desired in new the first being Nissan's 200SX/Silvia. As of early 2006,
automobiles. rain-sensing wipers are optional or standard on all Cadillac
For solving these problems, In this paper, we present the and most Volkswagen, and are available on many other
concept using a vision-based smart wiper system that a driver to main-stream manufacturers.
collect visual information during precipitation this is done 2.1 Why Automatic Wiper
Using PIC microcontroller with CAN (Controller Area In the present automobiles the number of facilities is much
Network) facilities. Use of CAN controller because that higher. The driver has to concentrate on road while driving,
combine the connection between windscreen wiper switch, and with increased traffic, things get frustrating. The
windscreen wiper motor and windscreen wiper restoration features in the car like GPRS to trace the route, music system,
machine, and related unit. This was originally developed for air condition system etc may drive away the attention of
use in cars but now used in industrial automation and control the driver. Thus an effort has been made to reduce the
applications. CAN is a high-integrity serial data effort put by driver in controlling the speed of the wiper and
communications bus for real-time control applications. CAN put more concentration on his driving. Since this system is put
controller have master and slave system. into use in many higher end cars and has been successfully
Slave system collect the information about like amount of working, an effort was made to reduce the cost of the
rain, temperature, moisture from sensor and from various system so that this system can be implemented in common
other unit. This information sends it towards mater for father economic cars where a common man can also enjoy the
processing. Master analysis that data and take a decision and benefits. In section II, the detail explanation about
make logic. The decision include at what speeded the wiper designing aspects of the system is given. In section III the
motor rotate, and check whether there is any change in outer working procedure of the system is given. The section IV
and inner temperature if there is small changes then no covers the calculations involved, algorithm and the supporting
action to be taken, and if there is vast changes in temperature graphs. The Conclusion is drawn in Section V.
then which will automatically make the respons to the DESIGN
presence of moisture, It was found that the rain sensor is the expensive unit in the
present system and an effort is done in making a sensor which is
reasonable by price, the Cup Sensor. The sensing device used
here is basically a conical shaped cup with a tray on the top
of the cup to collect maximum possible amount of water.
The different views of the device are shown below.
When the rain begins and the visibility to the driver is
reducing, the system has to trigger the wiper to wipe the
water on the screen. It can so happen that the driver feels
the need of wiper but because the floater has not reached
the level of the probe the system may not begin its
function.

Fig 1: System Implementation on Car

And according adjusts that temperature and remove moister
inside car windshield.
The problem definition is to design a prototype for a PIC
microcontroller (PIC18F2580) based vision system aid in
windshield assembly which controls the windshield wiper
speed based on the amount of water. For this a comprehensive
study of sensors, actuators and mechanical design was done.
Development of hardware module and the software has FIG 2. The water collected at the bottom in a cup type rain
progress. The basic method used for designing the circuit is sensor
that a rain level sensor will detect the amount of rain and give Thus certain conditions were considered and the
the signal to the controller. calculations were carried out for the placement of the
Automatic Wiper system: probes at appropriate heights. Also there is a small opening at
Vehicles are now available with driver-programmable the bottom of the cup which eventually drains water from
intelligent (automatic) windscreen wipers that detect the the cup. If the rate of filling is greater than rate of
presence and amount of rain using a rain sensor. The sensor discharge of rain water than the water level rises to the next
automatically adjusts the speed of the blades according to the probe level and hence the wiper speed increases.
amount of rain detected. Rain-sensing windscreen wipers
appeared on various models in the late 20th century, one of

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3.1 Construction objects. When conductive or dielectric objects interfere with
Many attempts have been made at constructing an effective, these fields, it changes the capacitance of the capacitive sensor,
reliable, and cheap rain detection and wiper control system for as seen in Figures 1 and 2. This change in capacitance can then
vehicles. A perfect system could subtract one more task from be detected via circuitry and used to modulate an output signal.
the driver's workload, and allow them to better keep their eyes Capacitive sensors can detect the presence, position, and type
on the road and hands on the wheel during foul weather. of conductive or dielectric material interfering with their fringe
Despite this, automatic rain-sensing wiper systems are fields. When multiple capacitive sensors are connected in an
relatively uncommon in modern vehicles for a number of array, they can also be used to detect movement of a conductive
reasons. They are often too expensive, too unsightly, or too or dielectric object.
unreliable to be desired in new automobiles. While a number of This effect is most commonly seen in capacitive touch pads,
different design approaches have been made to improve upon such as on popular products like the iPod Touch from Apple.
these issues, none have been successful enough for the The electric field is created by applying an alternating current
technology to become widely adapted in new vehicles. By far (AC) voltage to one of the conductors forming the sensor
the most common rain detection method, and the one currently traces. A typical button sensor requires only two conductors,
employed by Hyundai vehicles, is the use of an optical sensor. which never physically connect but are separated by a small
These optical sensors function by transmitting an infrared distance and patterned into shapes. Depending on the
beam at an angle through the windshield and measuring the application of the sensor, the sensor traces can take on a variety
reflection to determine the presence of water. This is a of different sizes and patterns. The layout of the traces is often
relatively difficult task, requiring complex circuitry and designed to maximize the fringing fields over a given area. The
precision manufacturing. Optical sensors are thus somewhat traces, along with the materials surrounding them, also form the
expensive and can produce false readings when dirt or other base capacitance of the system, typically along the order of 2 –
particles on the windshield cause a reflection mimicking that of 20 picot-Farads (pF) in magnitude. Base capacitance should be
rain. Because it relies on an infrared beam for detection, the minimized when possible, as the change in capacitance
optical sensor also suffers from a very small sensing area on the resulting from fringe field interference is often less than 0.5 pF,
windshield, limiting its effectiveness in rapidly responding to and detection is easiest when the changing capacitance value is
light rain. In addition, the sensor housing is physically bulky, close to the base value. The idea to use capacitive-sensing to
reducing its appeal in luxury vehicles. These issues can largely detect rain on a windshield is not entirely new, as seen in
be mitigated by using a capacitive sensor rather than an optical United States Patent US6094981, among others.
one. Instead of sending an infrared beam through the wipers according This allows the design to contain few parts,
windshield glass, a capacitive sensor works by emitting an take up a small volume, and perform its job extremely well. It is
electric field which can pass through the glass to interact with significantly cheaper than the current optical sensor, with an
objects resting on it. Because water and other objects such as estimated $11.40 per unit cost, down from $18 for the optical
dirt or rocks interfere with the electric field in very different unit. It attaches to the interior of the windshield in the same
ways, the sensor will be less likely to be fooled if designed location as the optical unit, but takes up less volume in the
correctly. Unlike a standard capacitor, which confines the prototype unit and could be further refined if necessary in the
electric field lines between two conductors in a tight package, a production model for aesthetic purposes. Most importantly, the
capacitive sensor allows the field lines 8 to spread out, and is new sensor utilizes highly accurate 24-bit
designed to maximize the fringing of the electric field lines capacitance-to-digital converters and an on-board
away from the conductors. microcontroller to allow extreme accuracy and prevention of
false-positives, improving the reliability of the device. These
improvements in cost 10 and functionality will enable
Hyundai to integrate the product into more vehicles in the
future, further improving vehicle safety in the modern era.
4. FAST Diagram
4.1 Design a Capacitive-Sensing Circuit

Fig 3. Fringle field lines extending from sensor traces with

wind shield These electric field lines are known as “fringe
fields”, and are vital to the operation of a capacitive sensor.
Because they extend away from the conductors, which are
typically just copper traces laid out flat on a printed circuit
board (PCB), the fringe fields can be interacted with by other

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Fig 4. A stable multi vibrator capacitive-sensing circuit (C1 All components will be linked by a PIC or MSP430
= C sensor) microcontroller. The rain sensors are separated into two
The first proposed design was to build a capacitive sensing categories for an accurate solution. The speech recognition
circuit from basic components such as op-amps, comparators, module is powered by the HM2007 chip. The input signals the
and passive components. Due to experience in analog circuitry, microcontroller and output module signals the windshield
the team realized that the capacitive sensor traces form a wiper mechanism. The control panel enables or disables the
variable capacitor that changes as objects interfere with the 13 entire system without affecting any other circuit to which the
fringe fields. Many circuits exist that utilize the time-constant system is attached.
principle of an RC circuit to produce an output waveform. An a SENSORS
stable RC-multi vibrator circuit, as seen in Figure 3, produces a 6.1 Impedance Sensors
square wave output with a frequency varying with respect to the The impedance sensor to be implemented is the grid sensor
capacitance of the sensor traces when they are used as the shown in Figure. The sensor works by outputting a voltage,
capacitor. which is a function of how much water is in between the teeth.
This varying square wave could then be interpreted by a The closer the teeth, the more sensitive the sensor becomes.
microcontroller, and compared to known responses from rain to For the prototype, the separation distance will be adjusted
determine appropriate wiper action. between 0.10 mm and 1.0 mm to the desired sensitivity. At
WORKING OPERATION least two sensors will be made and placed at different locations
The battery supplies the power to the sensor as well as rain on the glass to increase reliability.
operated motor. Wiper motor is automatically ON during the
time of rainfall. The senor is fixed in the vehicle glass. The
conductive (Touch) sensor is used in this project. It senses the
rainfall and giving control signal to the control unit. The
control unit activates the wiper motor automatically. This
operation is called “Automatic rain operated.

Fig 5. Block diagram of wiper arranging circuit system

The system can be summarized with the block diagram as
shown in Figure. The components that require the most
resources are the rain sensors,
Fig 7. Grid Sensor with varying electrical conduction due to
water
A problem with this particular approach is that sometimes rain
water is not very conductive; therefore, the output voltage will
be very small and undetectable. One way around this problem
is to use another impedance sensor that monitors capacitance
instead of conductance.The sensor represented in Figure 4 is
made of two thin copper plates placed around a glass, thus
forming a capacitor. The presence of water changes the
permittivity of the capacitor.
The sudden change results in a detectable current/voltage that is
fed into a special MARE Windshield Wiper System
ECE4007L02: Group 48 input signal module for amplification
and standardization.
Obviously, the reliability and accuracy of the two impedance
Fig 6. Block Diagram of the System with Inputs and
sensors discussed above can be improved by combining a
Outputs
multitude of them. However, they are vulnerable to corrosion,
Speech recognition hardware and software,powersupply,
dirt, and other kinds of deposits.
input/output signal modules and the windshield wiper
6.2 Optical Sensors
mechanism.

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 The optical sensors will be used to bounce beams of light CONCLUSION
through the windshield, and look for disturbances in the beams Our Automatic multispeed rain operated wiper system works
caused by raindrops. Typically, a rain sensor will have an well with conductive sensor. As future extraction work the
emitter that emits pulses of light, coupled into the windshield same can be carried out by optical sensor. As far as accuracy of
with a lens. These beams travel through the windshield at about the system is concerned it is more accurate than conductive
45 degrees. The beams are totally internally reflected by the sensor. But the reason for not using optical sensor is because
outside surface of the windshield, so they bounce back into the due to higher cost
sensor. The sensor then detects the reflected beams and REFERENCES
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Citation: P.Naresh et al. Automatic Rain-Sensing Wiper System for 4-Wheeler Vehicles. J. of Advancement in Engineering and
Technology V3I4. DOI: 10.15297/JAET.V3I4.05

Copyright: © 2015 P.Naresh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

J. of Advancement in Engineering and Technology Volume3 / Issue4 ISSN: 2348-2931 5