Methods and systems for complete coverage of a surface by an autonomous robot

US9188983B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• iRobot Corporation · US

Inventors

• Michael S. Stout · Rancho Palos Verdes, US
• Gabriel F. Brisson · Albany, US
• Enrico Di Bernardo · Pasadena, US
• Paolo Pirjanian · Glendale, US
• Dhiraj Goel · Pasadena, US
• James Philip Case · Los Angeles, US
• Michael Dooley · Pasadena, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Apr 11, 2014
• Grant date: Nov 17, 2015
• Expiry date: Jun 28, 2034

Classification

• Technology area (CPC Y): Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
• CPC primary: Y10S901/46
• WIPO field: Control
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

A robot configured to navigate a surface, the robot comprising a movement mechanism; a logical map representing data about the surface and associating locations with one or more properties observed during navigation; an initialization module configured to establish an initial pose comprising an initial location and an initial orientation; a region covering module configured to cause the robot to move so as to cover a region; an edge-following module configured to cause the robot to follow unfollowed edges; a control module configured to invoke region covering on a first region defined at least in part based at least part of the initial pose, to invoke region covering on least one additional region, to invoke edge-following, and to invoke region covering cause the mapping module to mark followed edges as followed, and cause a third region covering on regions discovered during edge-following.