240 results about "Mobile robot system" patented technology

A mobile robot system for performing a plurality of separate operations, and including at least one autonomous wheeled mobile robot having at least one wheel-driving motor, an on-board computer, a system for navigation, orientation, and maneuvering in an environment with moving obstacles, a sensor system, a wireless communication system operative to receive and send signals, and a plurality of dockable operation modules and operative to be selectively coupled to the autonomous mobile robot to form an operation unit, wherein the autonomous wheeled mobile robot autonomously docks to the dockable operation modules.

A mobile robotic system includes a charging device and a mobile robot. The charging device is provided with a light emitter and a set of first charging contacts for supplying a charging signal. The mobile robot has a first side provided with a first light sensor, a second side provided with a second light sensor and a set of second charging contacts corresponding to the first charging contacts, a rechargeable battery unit, and a control unit. When charging of the battery unit is intended, the control unit enables movement of the mobile robot until the first light sensor detects light emitted by the light emitter, subsequently enables rotation of the mobile robot until the second light sensor detects the light from the light emitter, and then enables movement of the mobile robot toward the charging device until the first and second charging contacts come into contact.

Disclosed is a mobile robot system having a plurality of exchangeable work modules, thereby providing a mobile robot capable of performing various functions at a low cost. The mobile robot system comprises a plurality of work modules, which perform different works, respectively; a module station for connecting the plurality of work modules; and a mobile robot, which selects and connects to one of the plurality of work modules from the module station according to a work task to be performed. The mobile robot autonomously operates to perform the work task.

A robot remote control method based on Internet is disclosed. The remote user computer is connected to the robot control website through Internet, connected to the moving robot system via LAN. When the robot control website accesses in the control requirement of the remote user computer, the system detects the delay of the user by a delay-detection module, sends the result to the control selection module, provides responding control module such as direct control, prediction control or monitoring control to the user according to the delay type. The user accesses in responding control module and controls the moving of the robot through the control interface displayed on the user terminal.

The possibilities of collision of a mobile robot with objects can be reduced significantly in actual robot movements. In an aspect of the present invention, there is provided an autonomous mobile robot system including a mobile robot and a computing system. The mobile robot includes: a sensing section for measuring surrounding conditions of the mobile robot; a position-posture estimating section for estimating position-posture data from sensing data obtained by the sensing section and an environmental map; and a robot moving section for controlling movements of the mobile robot according to movement control data determined from the position-posture data thus estimated and movement route data.

The methods of the invention provide a variety of processes that may be performed by a mobile retail system or a mobile robot system. In accordance with one process, the invention provides a method of facilitating a retail environment, comprising the steps of providing a mobile system for operation in the retail environment, the mobile system including a processor portion, a memory portion storing retail data relating to retail activity, the processor portion storing data in the memory portion and retrieving data from the memory portion, an interaction portion, and a transport portion. The method further includes traveling from at least a first location to a second location by the mobile system; monitoring the retail environment by the mobile system; and accepting input from a customer in the retail environment by the mobile system. Various other operations may be performed by the mobile system in accordance with the system and method of the invention.

An autonomous mobile robot system having plural mobile robots and integrative planning means to plan the moving zone of the plural mobile robots, wherein: the integrative planning means is installed on the plural mobile robots including a main mobile robot to travel autonomously and a subordinate mobile robot to travel on the basis of the instructions of the main mobile robot; and each of the plural mobile robots is provided with, at least, measurement means to measure the situation of ambient environment, communication means to communicate between the integrative planning means and the other mobile robot, main device position recognition means to recognize the position of the mobile robot, subordinate device position recognition means to recognize the position of the other mobile robot, travel planning means to plan travel routes of the mobile robot and the other mobile robot, and travel control means to control a drive mechanism in accordance with the travel planning means. A guided vehicle and a truck or the like can travel autonomously and cooperatively while obtaining information on ambient environment without mechanical connection and can automatically be separated from and merged with each other.

A self-moving robot system, which can specify a moving area using information printed on flooring and move within the area while tracking the printed information, is provided. The self-moving robot system includes a remote controller and a self-moving robot body. The remote controller stores flooring coordinate information wirelessly received from the robot body in a memory, displays the information on a display unit, sets a series of coordinate information elements input by a user as moving area coordinate information, and transmits the moving area coordinate information to the robot body. The self-moving robot body reads coordinate information printed on flooring, extracts total coordinate information from the read coordinate information, wirelessly transmits the total coordinate information as flooring coordinate information to the remote controller, reads coordinate information printed on the flooring, and moves while tracking the moving area coordinate information wirelessly received from the remote controller on the flooring.

A living assistance system is provided with an information presentation device capable of directly displaying information relating to an article onto actual environment, a moving area generation unit (for generating a moving area of the robot, a grabbing feasible area generation unit for generating a grabbing feasible area of the robot, and a guide information generation unit for calculating guide information from an user to the article. The living assistance system displays information obtained by the moving area generation unit, the grabbing feasible area generation unit, and the guide information generation unit by using the information presentation device. Thus, there is provided the living assistance system that manages articles and the like in a house or the like, and can more intuitionally present attribute information to the article or information to be used for smoothly transferring the article to the user.

A mobile robot is provided for use in an operating environment. The mobile robot may include a mobile robot base, a conveyor system and a drive system. The conveyor system may be supported by the mobile robot base. The conveyor system may include a conveyor belt configured to receive an item with the mobile robot and / or provide the item from the mobile robot. The conveyor system may be configured to support the item during movement of the mobile robot within the operating environment. The drive system may be arranged with the mobile robot base. The drive system may be configured to move the mobile robot within the operating environment and position the conveyor system such that the conveyor belt is operable to receive the item with the mobile robot and / or provide the item from the mobile robot.

The invention comprises an intelligent warehousing mobile robot system. The intelligent warehousing mobile robot system comprises a mobile phone client, a robot module and a server, wherein the mobile client, the server and the robot module communicate with one another through a wireless communication network; the robot module comprises an ARM chip, an arduino chip, a camera, a motor driving module and a robot body; the server carries out path planning through adopting an A*path planning algorithm so as to obtain paths only containing inflection point coordinates and sends the paths to the robot module, so that control and direction correction of the robot module can be realized; the robot module carries out internal positioning through using a gyroscope and a mileage meter, and at the same time, the camera scans a two-dimensional code on the ground of a warehouse, so that the external positioning of the robot module can be carried out through using the arrangement scheme of the two-dimensional code of the warehouse, and therefore, the correction of the internal positioning can be realized. With the intelligent warehousing mobile robot system of the invention adopted, the accumulated error of the internal positioning can be effectively eliminated, accurate positioning can be obtained, and therefore, the robot can reach a destination more accurately to prepare for cargo transport.

The invention provides a modularized portable movable robot system, comprising a control unit module, a driving unit module, a moving platform module, a turnover arm module, an energy resource module, a sensor module and a standard interface module; the energy resource module is embedded in the moving platform module; the turnover arm module is movably connected with the moving platform module; the control unit is connected with the moving platform module by the driving unit module; the sensor module is connected with the control unit module by the standard interface module. The modularized portable movable robot system realizes modularization on three aspects of mechanism, electron and software, leads the functional extension of the robot to be easy, leads the robot to be simply controlled, facilitates the harmonization and operation of a multi-robot system to be carried out, has waterproof design, and can be applied to the fields such as military field, public safety field, civil field and education research field, etc.

A mobile robot system includes a plurality of mobile robots. Each robot has a predetermined size of large, medium, small or back-packable. The mobile robot includes a chassis, drive system components, power components, a main processor, a communication system and a power and data distribution system. The chassis has a predetermined size of large, medium, small or back-packable. Drive system components are operably attached to the chassis and power components are operably connected to the drive system components and the power and data distribution system. The main processor, the communication system and the power and data distribution system are all operably connected together and operably connected to the traction components and the power components. The main processor, the communication system, and the power and data distribution system are all configured for use with the predetermined size of the chassis and at least one other size.

An autonomous mobile robot system allocates mapping, localization, planning and control functions to at least one navigator robot and allocates task performance functions to one or more functional robots. The at least one navigator robot maps the work environment, localizes itself and the functional robots within the map, plans the tasks to be performed by the at least one functional robot, and controls and tracks the functional robot during task performance. The navigator robot performs substantially all calculations for mapping, localization, planning and control for both itself and the functional robots. In one implementation, the navigator robot remains stationary while controlling and moving the functional robot in order to simplify localization calculations. In one embodiment, the navigator robot is equipped with sensors and sensor processing hardware required for these tasks, while the functional robot is not equipped with sensors or hardware employed for these purposes.

The invention provides a mobile robot system and a control method thereof.Only when a remote controller reception module of a beacon senses a signal transmitted from a mobile robot, the sensed result is reported to the mobile robot in the form of a response signal.In addition, the Field-of-View (FOV) of the remote control reception module is restricted by a directivity receiver.Only when the signal transmitted from the mobile robot is sensed within the restricted FOV, the sensed result is reported to the mobile robot.

The present invention relates to a mobile robot system, include a 3-freedom mobile platform, a 5-freedom robot, vision system and comptuer control system. Its camera with rotation and pitching function is mounted in the top end of straight-line guideway of robot, the mobile platform can implement forward, backward, leftward, rightward and automatic revolving 3-freedom omnibearing movement, and its 5-freedom robot is consisted of 1 moving joint and 4 turning joints, and its operation is flexible. The movement of said robot can implement large range movement operation function. Besides, said invention also provides the application range and method of said mobile robot system.

The invention discloses an adaptive tracking control method of a multi-mobile-robot system under the condition of attitude unknown. The method includes the following steps of establishing a model for each mobile robot in the multi-mobile-robot system; establishing an error model (as shown in the description) with non-linear disturbance of a follower f and a navigator r, wherein in the multi-mobile-robot system, each mobile robot obtains the information of other mobile robots to carry out non-linear disturbance assessment to obtain the non-linear disturbance estimate value of the mobile robot; establishing an adaptive law (as shown in the description) of non-linear disturbance coefficients; establishing a second-order observer for the trigonometric function of the error angle of the follower and the navigator; and establishing an adaptive control law for the follower based on the observer through the combination of the observer and the adaptive law to perform tracking control of the follower and to make the follower realize the tracking control of the navigator.

Systems and methods for use of optical odometry sensor systems in a mobile robot. The optical odometry sensor system is positioned within a recessed structure on an underside of the mobile robot body and configured to output optical odometry data. The optical odometry sensor system includes an optical odometry camera that includes a telecentric lens configured to capture images of a tracking surface beneath the body and having a depth of field that provides a range of viewing distances at which a tracking surface is captured in focus from a first distance within the recessed structure to a second distance below the underside of the mobile robot body.

The invention provides a wheel-foot conversion type mobile robot system, relating to mobile robots. The wheel-foot conversion type mobile robot system is used for solving the problems that the obstacle avoidance ability of the existing wheeled robots is poor and the walking speed of the existing footed robots is low. According to the wheel-foot conversion type mobile robot system, one end of each central axle is fixedly connected and is axially locked through a corresponding first limiting block, a shoulder is arranged at the other end of each central axle, a spring sleeves each central axle and is located between a corresponding bearing and the corresponding shoulder, a central blind hole is formed in the other end of each central axle, and a first key groove is formed in each central blind hole; semi-annular grooves are formed in fixed half wheels along the circumferential direction, movable half wheels and the fixed half wheels are in turning connection relatively to the central axles, complete wheels are formed by the fixed half wheels and the movable half wheels during the conversion to a wheeled state, the movable half wheels are turned into the semi-annular grooves of the fixed half wheels during the conversion to a footed state, and single scrolls are mounted on the central axles. The wheel-foot conversion type mobile robot system belongs to the field of the mobile robots.

The invention discloses an automatic obstacle crossing system of a crawler-type transformer substation inspection robot and an automatic obstacle crossing control method. The system comprises a mobilerobot body, a sensing system, a communication system, a control system, a pan-tilt system, a lighting system, an automatic charging system and an alarm system, wherein the sensing system, the controlsystem, the communication system, the lighting system and the alarm system are installed on the robot body; the pan-tilt system is arranged on the mobile robot system; information transmission is conducted between the sensing system and an industrial control computer, and information transmission is conducted between a movement control system and the industrial control computer. The robot can becharged by using the automatic charging system, the signal obtained by the sensing system is transmitted to the industrial control computer for analysis and processing, surrounding obstacle information is identified, analyzed and processed, then the industrial control computer sends a signal to the control system and other various assist systems, automatic obstacle crossing of the transformer substation inspection robot can be achieved, and meanwhile, the conditions of devices in a transformer substation can be monitored.

A mobile robot measures a rotation angle using information from an image photographed by a vision camera. A mobile robot system comprises a main body of the robot, a driving part for driving a plurality of wheels; a vision camera mounted on a main body thereof to photograph an upper image which is perpendicular to a traveling direction; and a controller for calculating a rotation angle using polar-mapping image data obtained by polar-mapping a ceiling image, photographed by the vision camera, with respect to a ceiling of a working area. The controller drives the driving part using a calculated rotation angle. The rotation angle is measured by the vision cameras and the rotation angle can be used to compensate the working path, without having to provide expensive devices such as an accelerometer or a gyroscope, thereby saving manufacturing cost.

The invention relates to a minitype portable type intelligent mobile robot system with multiple degrees of freedom used for treating small explosives. The system comprises a mechanical movement part and an electric control part and is characterized in that the robot system comprises a control unit module, a moving platform module, an energy source module, a mechanical arm module, a picture sensor module and a remote control module; wherein, each independent functional module is mutually connected by adopting a standard mechanical interface; an embedded type computer APM 7 as a main controller is adopted among all the CPU and the Ethernet or CAN bus as a master controller is adopted and each CPU is connected by Ethernet or a CAN bus; all central processing units adopt standard TCP / IP or protocol communication and the body and arm of the robot are respectively provided with a camera. The robot system is light in weight and convenient in carrying; the robot is provided with 12 degrees of freedom and can be run autonomously and can be carried out by remote video control by adopting the mechanical arm which can remove explosive substance with 8 degrees of freedom; the robot system can be run in all weathers and in all terrain and can be applied to the field of actual combat.

A mobile robot is configured to navigate on a sidewalk and deliver a delivery to a predetermined location. The robot has a body and an enclosed space within the body for storing the delivery during transit. At least two cameras are mounted on the robot body and are adapted to take visual images of an operating area. A processing component is adapted to extract straight lines from the visual images taken by the cameras and generate map data based at least partially on the images. A communication component is adapted to send and receive image and / or map data. A mapping system includes at least two such mobile robots, with the communication component of each robot adapted to send and receive image data and / or map data to the other robot. A method involves operating such a mobile robot in an area of interest in which deliveries are to be made.

The application of the invention discloses a map creating and positioning method of a robot. According to the method, the sensor data of a robot is transmitted to a cloud server through a wireless network, then the cloud server is used for creating a map and generating robot positioning information, and then the map information and the positioning information are transmitted to the robot and a user terminal through a wireless network. According to the map creating and positioning method, strong computing and resources storing of the cloud server are utilized to make up the deficiency of the onboard computing capacity of a robot, so that a complex robot algorithm can be operated, and robot synchronous positioning and navigation can be carried out on large-scale environment, so as to generate an environment map and a robot position. The application of the invention also discloses a mobile robot system adopting the method.

A charging apparatus is configured to charge a mobile robot. The mobile robot is configured to emit an optical pattern. The charging apparatus includes a main body configured to perform charging of the mobile robot as the mobile robot docks with the charging apparatus, and two or more position markers located at the main body and spaced apart from each other. The position markers are configured to create indications distinguishable from a surrounding region when the optical pattern is emitted to surfaces of the position markers.