Robot Cleaner Dust Inflow Sensing Unit with Guided Light Reception
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing robot cleaners face challenges in optimizing dust sensing capacity, leading to inefficient cleaning as they struggle to accurately detect and differentiate areas with dust from those without, resulting in uneven cleaning performance.
Innovation Solution
A dust inflow sensing unit is integrated into the robot cleaner, featuring a light emitting part and a light receiving part with guide members that restrict their respective regions to enhance sensitivity, allowing the control unit to determine dust-sensed areas and adjust cleaning parameters such as brush rotation and suction force accordingly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If the light receiving region is made large to improve dust sensing capacity, then the sensing sensitivity increases, but the reception of stray light increases causing false detection
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating a non-uniform light receiving guide member with varying thickness. The guide member has a first thickness in a first region and a second thickness in a second region, allowing different parts of the light receiving surface to have different light transmission properties. This enables the sensor to optimize both sensitivity and stray light rejection by having regions with different optical characteristics within the same component.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a thickness dimension to the light receiving guide member to control light reception characteristics. By varying the thickness of the guide member, the patent adds a new dimensional parameter for controlling light behavior, enabling differentiation between useful light signals and stray light based on their path lengths through the guide member.
2Measurement precision
If the light emitting part and light receiving part are positioned to overlap maximally, then dust detection sensitivity improves, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the light emitting part and light receiving part into a single integrated sensing unit. The light receiving guide member is positioned to overlap with the light emitting part, combining multiple functions (light emission, light guidance, light reception) into a compact structure. This integration reduces device complexity while maintaining high dust detection sensitivity through optimal positioning.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution significantly improves the robot cleaner's ability to detect dust inflow and differentiate areas, leading to more efficient cleaning by prioritizing high-dust areas and optimizing cleaning parameters, thereby enhancing overall cleaning efficiency and reducing cleaning time.
Implementation Method 1
a light emitting part having a transmission region to emit a beam, and a light receiving part having a reception region to overlap the transmission region
Data Source
AI summary
A dust inflow sensing unit and a robot cleaner having the same. The dust inflow sensing unit includes a light emitting element to emit a beam having a transmission region, a light receiving element having a reception region overlapping the transmission region of the light emitting element, and a guide member to restrict the reception region of the light receiving element to a designated range until the reception region reaches the light emitting element.