Robotic Surface Touch Mapping for Targeted Precision Cleaning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current robotic systems lack the ability to efficiently identify and clean surfaces that have been touched by actors, such as humans, animals, or robots, often resorting to indiscriminate cleaning which is inefficient and wasteful.
Innovation Solution
A robotic device equipped with sensors and control circuitry that generates a map of the environment, identifies keypoints representing actor body locations, and determines if these keypoints are within a threshold distance of stationary features, allowing targeted cleaning of only touched areas.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If indiscriminate cleaning is performed on all surfaces, then cleaning coverage is improved, but cleaning efficiency and resource utilization deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The cleaning task is segmented into targeted zones based on actor interaction data. Instead of cleaning entire surfaces, the system divides cleaning areas into specific portions that require attention, identified through keypoint tracking and proximity detection to actor body parts.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies cleaning resources locally only to areas that have been touched by actors. By identifying specific portions of surfaces within threshold distances of actor keypoints, the system concentrates cleaning effort where needed rather than applying it uniformly across all surfaces.
2Measurement precision
If comprehensive surface monitoring is implemented, then cleaning precision is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses an intermediary data structure (the map with marked portions) to bridge actor tracking and cleaning execution. Actor keypoints serve as intermediaries that translate complex sensor data into simple proximity checks against surface portions, reducing the complexity of direct touch detection.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a digital copy or representation of the physical environment as a map, which stores information about surfaces and their cleanliness status. This virtual model allows complex monitoring and decision-making to occur in the digital domain, simplifying the physical system's requirements.
3Loss of time
If real-time actor tracking is performed, then cleaning timeliness is improved, but computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs partial tracking by focusing only on relevant actor keypoints (hands, fingers) rather than monitoring the entire actor body continuously. This selective approach reduces computational load while maintaining timely detection of touch events on surfaces.
Data Source
AI summary
A system includes a robotic device, a sensor disposed on the robotic device, and circuitry configured to perform operations. The operations include determining a map that represents stationary features of an environment and receiving, from the sensor, sensor data representing the environment. The operations also include determining, based on the sensor data, a representation of an actor within the environment, where the representation includes keypoints representing corresponding body locations of the actor. The operations also include determining that a portion of a particular stationary feature is positioned within a threshold distance of a particular keypoint and, based on thereon, updating the map to indicate that the portion is to be cleaned. The operations further include, based on the map as updated, causing the robotic device to clean the portion of the particular stationary feature.