Vision-Based Lawn Mower Navigation Using 3D Point Clouds

The patent extracts the boundary definition function from the physical wire infrastructure and relocates it to the autonomous mower's onboard vision system. The mower captures images, detects natural or artificial features in the environment, and uses these features to define and maintain work region boundaries without requiring external wire installations.

The patent replaces the mechanical boundary wire system with an optical vision-based system. Instead of using physical wires that detect mower position through electrical contact, the system uses cameras and image processing algorithms to detect visual features and calculate mower position and orientation relative to work region boundaries.

The patent implements a dynamic boundary definition system where work region boundaries are not fixed physical installations but are dynamically determined by the mower's vision system. Boundaries can be easily redefined by capturing new images of the work region and detecting different visual features, allowing rapid adaptation to changing maintenance needs without physical reinstallation.

The system allows boundary parameters to be changed by detecting different visual features in the environment. By changing which features are detected and how they are interpreted, the effective boundary configuration can be modified without changing the physical environment, enabling flexible adaptation to different work region requirements.

The patent applies partial action by implementing a two-stage processing approach: comprehensive image processing and feature extraction are performed offline when computing resources are abundant, while only essential navigation functions are executed in real-time on the mobile platform. This reduces online computational requirements while maintaining sophisticated navigation capabilities.

The system performs preliminary processing of navigation data during offline periods when the mower is stationary or charging. Complex image analysis, feature matching, and path planning computations are completed beforehand, so that during active mowing operations, the mower only needs to execute pre-computed navigation commands, significantly reducing real-time computing resource consumption.