Cleaning Robot Hand-Gesture Control for Targeted Floor Cleaning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional cleaning robots lack the ability to recognize user intention and require manual operation, leading to inefficient cleaning and increased user labor, while traditional vacuum cleaners require significant user effort and are cumbersome.
Innovation Solution
A cleaning robot that uses image recognition to track a user's hand or marker, allowing it to adjust its movement and cleaning operations based on user input, thereby enabling interactive control and reducing manual labor.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a cleaning robot autonomously travels and cleans without user intervention, then productivity is improved, but the cleaning ability may be insufficient and it cannot recognize user intention
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms through sensors (cameras, proximity sensors, force sensors) that continuously monitor the environment and user interactions. The cleaning robot processes this feedback information to adjust its cleaning behavior, recognize user intentions through hand gesture recognition, and adapt its autonomous operation accordingly, thereby resolving the contradiction between autonomous productivity and user intention recognition capability
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical control interfaces with optical and sensing systems. Instead of requiring physical manipulation or complex mechanical controls, the system uses image processing to recognize hand gestures and optical sensors to detect user intentions, substituting mechanical interaction with optical-field-based recognition, thus enabling the robot to understand user intentions while maintaining autonomous cleaning efficiency
2Productivity
If a vacuum cleaner increases suction power, then cleaning ability is improved, but the size and weight of the main body increase, resulting in increased user labor
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from traditional mechanical vacuum cleaners requiring manual pushing to an autonomous cleaning robot that uses sensors, image processing, and automated navigation systems. This substitution eliminates the need for user physical effort while maintaining or improving cleaning ability through optimized suction mechanisms and intelligent path planning, thereby resolving the contradiction between cleaning performance and user labor
3Ease of operation
If a cleaning robot uses preset traveling patterns, then ease of operation is improved, but it is impossible to recognize user intention and adapt to user needs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic adaptability by enabling the cleaning robot to switch between autonomous preset patterns and user-directed modes. The system dynamically adjusts its operation based on detected hand gestures and user interactions, allowing it to transition from simple autonomous patterns to adaptive user-intention-following behavior, thus resolving the contradiction between operational simplicity and adaptability to user needs
Data Source
AI summary
A cleaning robot including a main body, a moving assembly to move the main body, a cleaning tool provided at a bottom part of the main body to collect foreign substances on a floor, and an imager to collect images around the main body. The cleaning robot also including a controller to recognize motion of a hand by performing image processing of the collected images, identify a control command corresponding to the motion of the hand, plan a moving direction and a moving distance of the main body as movement information based on the control command, and control operations of the moving assembly and the cleaning tool based on the planned movement information. Since the user directly controls movement of the cleaning robot, it is possible to improve interactivity between human and cleaning robot, to reduce the effort by the user and increase convenience.