Companion Robot Mode Switching for Outdoor Safety Monitoring
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current robot technologies are inadequate for ensuring user safety when the user is outside their home, as they lack advanced motor skills and sensors necessary for effective monitoring and protection in varying outdoor environments.
Innovation Solution
A method for controlling a robot that involves acquiring request information to maintain a prescribed distance from the user and collect surrounding information, changing the robot's settings from a 'home' specification to a 'walk' specification when the user is outside their home, enabling advanced motor skills and sensor usage for enhanced safety and monitoring.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the robot uses basic specifications for collecting surrounding information inside the home, then the device complexity is reduced, but the robot cannot ensure user safety when the user is outside the home
Solution Approach 1:
The robot dynamically changes its operational specifications based on its location. When the robot detects it is inside the home, it operates with basic specifications for collecting surrounding information. When it detects it is outside the home, it automatically switches to advanced specifications that include enhanced motor skills and sensors for ensuring user safety. This dynamic adaptation resolves the contradiction by allowing the robot to have different capability levels appropriate to different environments.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot changes its operational parameters (sensor activation levels, motor skill complexity, processing power) based on the environment. Inside the home, parameters are set to basic levels to reduce complexity. Outside the home, parameters are elevated to advanced levels to ensure user safety through enhanced monitoring and protection capabilities.
2Reliability
If the robot changes settings to use advanced motor skills and sensors outside the home, then user safety monitoring is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The robot employs dynamic configuration where advanced motor skills and sensors are activated only when needed (outside the home). The system maintains a pool of available capabilities but selectively engages them based on environmental context, thus improving safety monitoring without permanently increasing device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot adjusts its operational parameters by switching between different configuration modes. The advanced specifications are kept as optional parameters that are instantiated only when the robot is outside the home, allowing the system to maintain simplicity indoors while providing enhanced capabilities outdoors when necessary for user safety.
3Reliability
If the robot collects surrounding information continuously outside the home, then user safety is enhanced, but the energy consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of continuous information collection, the robot uses periodic sampling of the surrounding environment when outside the home. The advanced sensors and motor skills are activated at regular intervals to collect necessary safety information, reducing overall energy consumption while maintaining adequate monitoring capability for user safety.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot adjusts its energy consumption parameters by switching to advanced specifications only when outside the home, and using basic specifications when inside. This parameter change ensures that high energy-consuming operations are performed only when necessary for safety, optimizing the balance between user safety monitoring and power consumption.
Data Source
AI summary
A robot control system acquires request information requesting a robot to keep within a prescribed distance from a user and to collect surrounding information, acquires, from the robot, location information indicating a location of the robot and confirmation information indicating that the robot is near the user, and transmits, to the robot, a command for changing a setting of the robot from a first specification to a second specification in response to the request in a case where it is determined, on a basis of the map information, the location information, and the confirmation information, that the user of the robot is accompanying the robot outside a home area of the user, the first specification enabling the robot to collect the surrounding information inside the home area, and the second specification enabling the robot to collect the surrounding information outside the home area.