Mobile cleaning robot teaming and persistent mapping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing mobile cleaning robots operate independently, creating inefficiencies in cleaning tasks and map updates, as each robot generates its own map and lacks coordinated task performance.
Innovation Solution
A system of mobile cleaning robots with teaming capabilities, utilizing a persistent map shared between robots, where sensors and control modules enable navigation, map updates, and coordinated task performance, with a central server managing map versions and updates.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If multiple mobile cleaning robots operate independently and each generates its own map, then each robot can autonomously navigate and perform cleaning tasks, but cleaning efficiency is reduced and map updates are redundant
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the mapping functions of multiple independent robots into a collaborative system. Robots share map data through a central server, allowing them to collectively build and maintain a unified persistent map of the environment. This eliminates redundant mapping operations and improves overall cleaning efficiency by leveraging the combined knowledge of all robots.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a central server as an intermediary to manage map data sharing between robots. The server receives map updates from individual robots, processes and stores the persistent map, and distributes it to other robots. This intermediary enables efficient information exchange without requiring direct robot-to-robot communication, reducing time loss and improving productivity.
2Ease of operation
If each robot establishes its own map, then navigation can be performed autonomously, but the system complexity increases due to multiple separate maps
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple individual robot maps into a single unified persistent map stored on a central server. This reduces system complexity by eliminating the need for each robot to independently manage separate maps, while still enabling autonomous navigation through shared spatial information.
Solution Approach 2:
The unified persistent map serves as a universal resource for all robots in the system. Instead of each robot having its own dedicated map, the shared map provides navigation and environmental information to all robots, simplifying the overall system architecture while maintaining autonomous operation capabilities.
3Productivity
If robots perform cleaning tasks independently without coordination, then task assignment is simple, but cleaning coverage is incomplete and tasks are repeated
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms where robots report their cleaning status and location information to the central server. The server updates the persistent map with this information and uses it to coordinate task assignment, ensuring that robots clean unvisited areas and avoid repeating work in already-cleaned zones, thereby improving overall cleaning coverage.
Solution Approach 2:
The central server acts as an intermediary that collects and processes information about cleaned areas from individual robots. By maintaining awareness of which areas have been cleaned through this intermediary, the system can coordinate robot assignments to ensure complete coverage without repetition, addressing the information loss problem.
Data Source
AI summary
A multi-robot system includes a first a mobile cleaning robot that has a local storage device to store a persistent map of an environment, at least one sensor to sense the environment, and a control module. The control module is configured to: control the mobile cleaning robot to navigate in the environment using the persistent map and sensing data provided by the at least one sensor, share the persistent map with a second mobile cleaning robot, and coordinate with the second mobile cleaning robot to perform cleaning tasks.