Robot Vacuum Navigation Styles for User-Selectable Cleaning Priorities
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current robot vacuum cleaners lack user-centric control options that align with individual cleaning styles and environmental needs, as they often prioritize one aspect over others, such as cleaning time, coverage, and obstacle avoidance, leading to suboptimal performance in diverse user environments.
Innovation Solution
The introduction of personalized, user-selectable robot styles that prioritize one of three dimensions - cleaning time, coverage, or obstacle avoidance - through adjustments to autonomous navigation, allowing for gentle, fast, thorough, or balanced cleaning modes, which can be chosen directly by users or automatically determined based on user input, cleaning history, or environmental data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the robot prioritizes cleaning time, then cleaning speed is improved, but coverage and obstacle avoidance deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The robot implements dynamic style switching that adjusts navigation parameters in real-time based on environmental conditions and user preferences. The system transitions between different cleaning styles (e.g., gentle, fast, thorough, balanced) by dynamically modifying navigation speed, obstacle avoidance distance, and cleaning coverage parameters, allowing the robot to optimize cleaning speed when appropriate while maintaining safety and coverage when needed.
2Reliability
If the robot prioritizes coverage, then cleaning thoroughness is improved, but cleaning time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs parameter changes by adjusting navigation and cleaning parameters based on the selected style. When thorough cleaning is prioritized, the robot modifies parameters such as reducing navigation speed, increasing obstacle approach distance, and extending cleaning path coverage. Conversely, when time is constrained, parameters are adjusted to increase speed while maintaining adequate coverage, resolving the contradiction between thoroughness and time consumption.
3Reliability
If the robot prioritizes obstacle avoidance, then safety is improved, but cleaning coverage deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The robot applies local quality by implementing style-specific navigation behaviors that adjust obstacle avoidance characteristics in different contexts. In gentle style, the robot maintains larger safety margins from obstacles. In fast or balanced styles, the robot reduces avoidance distance to improve coverage. This localized adjustment of avoidance parameters allows the system to prioritize safety when needed while maintaining coverage efficiency in other scenarios.
Data Source
AI summary
Embodiments provide a plurality of personalized, user selectable styles. Each style is determined by a combination of dimensions. Each style, except the default balanced style, prioritizes one of the dimensions over the other cleaning dimensions. In one embodiment, the styles are cleaning styles and the cleaning dimensions are cleaning time, coverage and obstacle avoidance. The cleaning styles are gentle, fast, thorough and balanced. The gentle style protects expensive furniture, with obstacle avoidance prioritized over cleaning time and coverage. The fast style cleans quickly, prioritizing cleaning time over coverage and obstacle avoidance. The thorough style prioritizes coverage over cleaning time and obstacle avoidance. The balanced style prioritizes all three cleaning dimensions substantially the same. The prioritization is achieved through adjustments to the autonomous robot navigation. User selection of a style can be achieved directly or automatically based on various mechanisms, such as user history.