Wireless remote control for floor cleaning robot uses two cameras to create 3D map and to locate fixed points in cleaning zone to determine current position

摘要

Wireless remote control robot comprises a wheel drive unit (5), an upper camera (14), on principal body of robot (10), which photographs an image in a direction perpendicular to robots displacement. A control unit (18) controls the wheel drive so that the robot moves inside the region to be cleaned at a predetermined rate. The controller creates a map image of the cleaning region from the camera image and recognizes a position by comparing the map with current image input from camera. The controller actuates the wheel drive so that it follows a target path from a recognized position when a cleaning signal is sent. The controller creates the map image independently of transmission or not of the cleaning signal. The robot has a front camera (13) which takes an image in the displacement direction. The controller creates a three dimensional image and divides it into a number of small cells of a predetermined size in order to determine a particular characteristic of the cells as a standard coordinate for current position recognition. A particular characteristic is that the controller uses fixed fittings in the cleaning region such as light bulb (31), smoke alarm (32), loudspeaker or fluorescent tube (33).