Robot Cleaner Region Detection for Narrow Entrance Navigation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional robot cleaners randomly travel in cleaning target spaces, leading to repeated cleaning of the same regions, inefficiency in reaching new areas, and difficulty navigating narrow entrances, resulting in incomplete cleaning and inconvenience.
Innovation Solution
A robot cleaner equipped with a detecting unit and controller that identifies not-yet-cleaned regions, sets cleaning regions, and adjusts its path to avoid overlapping cleaning, allowing it to move efficiently and accurately within the cleaning space by detecting walls and corners, and correcting its location based on accumulated movement distance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the robot cleaner travels randomly in the cleaning target space, then the robot cleaner can move freely without complex navigation, but it repeatedly passes the same region leading to repeated cleaning and low cleaning efficiency
Solution Approach 1:
The robot cleaner uses a detecting unit to continuously sense cleaned and uncleaned regions, providing feedback to the controller. The controller adjusts the travel path based on this feedback, ensuring the robot moves to uncleaned regions and avoids repeatedly cleaning the same areas, thereby improving cleaning efficiency without requiring complex navigation algorithms.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot cleaner performs preliminary detection of the cleaning target space to identify uncleaned regions before executing the cleaning path. By detecting and mapping the environment in advance, the robot can plan its cleaning route to cover all uncleaned areas systematically, avoiding random repetition and improving overall cleaning productivity.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the robot cleaner avoids obstacles by traveling around them, then the robot cleaner can navigate safely, but it cannot pass through narrow entrances to reach new regions
Solution Approach 1:
The robot cleaner dynamically adjusts its travel behavior based on the type of obstacle detected. When encountering walls or permanent obstacles, it travels around them. When detecting narrow entrances or doorways, it switches to a passing mode that allows it to navigate through these constricted spaces by detecting the entrance geometry and executing a targeted passing maneuver, thus improving adaptability to different spatial configurations.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot cleaner changes its operational parameters based on the detected environment. When a narrow entrance is detected, the controller modifies the travel speed, turning radius, and detection sensitivity to enable successful passage through the constrained space. This parameter adaptation allows the robot to handle both open areas and narrow passages effectively.
3Productivity
If the robot cleaner completes cleaning in a region, then the cleaning task is finished for that area, but the robot cleaner may not be released from the new region and cannot move out to continue cleaning
Solution Approach 1:
The detecting unit continuously monitors the cleaning status and region boundaries, providing real-time feedback to the controller. When the robot completes cleaning in a region, the feedback mechanism detects the presence of uncleaned adjacent regions and triggers a release command, enabling the robot to exit the current region and continue cleaning elsewhere, thus maintaining continuous cleaning productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot cleaner performs periodic checks to determine whether it should remain in or exit the current cleaning region. By periodically evaluating the cleaning status and detecting uncleaned areas, the robot can timely release from completed regions and transition to new regions, ensuring continuous cleaning operation without getting stuck.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for controlling a robot cleaner includes: detecting a cleaning target space, setting a cleaning region within the detected cleaning space and cleaning the set cleaning region; if the set cleaning region is completely cleaned, moving to a not-yet-cleaned region adjacent to a cleaning completion spot of the cleaning region; and setting a new cleaning region in the not-yet-cleaned region and performing cleaning. Without repeating a cleaning region in the cleaning target space, the robot cleaner can extend its cleaning region, so the cleaning efficiency of the robot cleaner can be improved. Also, the robot cleaner can be smoothly enter a new cleaning target space or released therefrom. In particular, even when the entrance of the new cleaning target space is narrow, the robot cleaner can smoothly enter the new cleaning target space and gets out thereof.