Building Resource Arbitration for Autonomous Robot Passage
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Solution Overview
Problem
In environments with multiple mobile bodies, such as robots operating in commercial facilities with human presence, efficient passage arbitration is challenging due to overlapping operations, leading to issues like robots waiting for elevators or colliding in narrow corridors, and existing solutions require costly and vendor-outside modifications.
Innovation Solution
A mobile body passage management system and method that utilizes a building resource management server to store and manage resource data, allocate resources, and arbitrate passage requests, including mechanisms like exclusive locks, counting semaphores, and passage lights to ensure efficient and flexible resource use.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If multiple mobile bodies operate autonomously in a shared environment, then operational versatility and productivity increase, but passage arbitration problems occur leading to reduced reliability and increased loss of time
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a building resource management server as an intermediary between multiple mobile bodies to manage passage arbitration. The server receives resource use requests from mobile bodies, checks availability, and grants or rejects access to passages and elevators, thereby coordinating movements and preventing conflicts without requiring modifications to the mobile bodies themselves.
2Adaptability or versatility
If a unified operation management server is used to manage passage, then passage arbitration capability improves, but device complexity and manufacturing cost increase due to required modifications
Solution Approach 1:
The building resource management server is designed as a universal system that can manage multiple types of mobile bodies (transport robots, cleaning robots, security robots) without requiring body-specific modifications. The server handles diverse passage arbitration scenarios through a unified interface, making the system adaptable to various robot types while maintaining low complexity on the mobile body side.
Solution Approach 2:
The passage arbitration function is extracted from the mobile bodies and centralized in the building resource management server. This separation allows the mobile bodies to remain simple execution units while the complex arbitration logic resides in the external server, reducing device complexity and modification requirements for the mobile bodies.
3Device complexity
If traditional passage arbitration methods are used without centralized management, then device complexity remains low, but loss of time increases due to waiting and conflicts
Solution Approach 1:
The building resource management server performs preliminary allocation of passages and elevators before mobile bodies arrive. By receiving resource use requests in advance and pre-coordinating passage rights, the server minimizes waiting time and conflicts, allowing mobile bodies to proceed efficiently without reactive arbitration delays.
Data Source
AI summary
A mobile body passage management system that manages passage of a mobile body that moves autonomously includes a storage unit that stores a resource necessary for passage of the mobile body as resource data, a resource management unit that manages an allocation situation of the resource to the mobile body, and a use request processing unit that receives a request from the mobile body, performs new allocation of the resource, and releases the resource when use by the mobile body is finished. With this configuration and operation, it is possible to efficiently arbitrate passage of the mobile body that moves autonomously.