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 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°.