Camera-Guided Pool Cleaner Navigation for Complete Surface Coverage
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Automated robotic pool cleaners face challenges in effectively controlling and monitoring their movement to ensure thorough cleaning of all pool surfaces, leading to inefficiencies and incomplete cleaning tasks.
Innovation Solution
A pool cleaning system equipped with a self-propelled cleaner, rotatably-mounted supports, a filter, an electric motor, cameras, and a controller that uses captured imagery to determine cleanliness characteristics and generate control signals for efficient navigation and re-cleaning of pool surfaces, along with a portable electronic device for graphical representation of cleaned and unclean areas.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If automated robotic pool cleaners are used to clean pool surfaces, then cleaning productivity is improved, but the ability to monitor and control cleaning completeness deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs cameras to capture images of the pool surface during cleaning operations. The controller processes these images to determine cleanliness characteristics and generates feedback signals to guide the cleaner's movement. This feedback mechanism enables real-time monitoring of cleaning progress and automatic adjustment of cleaning paths to ensure complete coverage of all pool surfaces.
2Ease of operation
If the cleaner operates autonomously without manual monitoring, then ease of operation is improved, but reliability of thorough cleaning deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The pool cleaner is equipped with onboard cameras and a controller that autonomously processes images to determine cleanliness characteristics. The system self-guides its movement by generating control signals based on real-time image analysis, eliminating the need for manual monitoring while ensuring reliable and thorough cleaning through automated decision-making algorithms.
3Device complexity
If the cleaner follows a fixed cleaning path, then device complexity is reduced, but manufacturing precision of cleaning coverage deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The cleaning system transitions from fixed, predetermined paths to dynamic, adaptive navigation. The controller continuously processes camera images to determine real-time cleanliness characteristics and dynamically adjusts the cleaner's movement path accordingly. This dynamic approach ensures precise cleaning coverage of all pool surfaces while maintaining manageable system complexity through algorithmic path optimization.
Data Source
AI summary
A pool cleaning system for cleaning debris from a submerged surface of a swimming pool includes a self-propelled pool cleaner having rotatably-mounted supports for supporting and guiding the cleaner on the pool surface; an electric motor for enabling the rotation of the rotatably-mounted supports on the pool surface; at least one camera to capture imagery of the pool surface; a controller, in electronic communication with the at least one camera, to determine a cleanliness characteristic of the pool surface on which the cleaner has passed based on the camera imagery and generate a control signal to direct movement of the cleaner based on the cleanliness characteristic of the pool surface, and a portable electronic device configured to present a graphic on a display, the graphic depicting the submerged surface of the pool and those portions of the surface that remain uncleaned as the cleaner traverses the pool surface.