Artificial intelligence laundry treatment apparatus and method of controlling the same

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11618986-B2
Application number	US-201916557995-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 30, 2019
Priority date	Aug 30, 2018
Publication date	Apr 4, 2023
Grant date	Apr 4, 2023

Abstract

Disclosed is an artificial intelligence laundry treatment apparatus including a washing tub configured to receive laundry, the washing tub being configured to be rotatable, a motor configured to rotate the washing tub, a controller configured to control the motor such that the washing tub is accelerated to a predetermined target speed at an acceleration gradient of 1.5 to 2.5 rpm/s within a range within which the laundry moves in the washing tub, and a current sensing unit configured to sense current of the motor, wherein the controller is configured to obtain at least one of laundry weight or laundry quality from output of an output layer of an artificial neural network pre-trained based on machine learning using a current value sensed by the current sensing unit during accelerated rotation of the washing tub as input of an input layer of the artificial neural network.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A laundry treatment apparatus comprising:
a washing tub that is configured to receive laundry, that is configured to be rotatable, and that includes a drum;
a motor configured to rotate the washing tub;
a controller configured to control the motor such that the washing tub is accelerated to a target speed at an acceleration gradient of 1.5 to 2.5 rotations per minute per second (rpm/s) within a range of rotation of the washing tub in which the laundry is separated from an inner surface of the washing tub; and
a current sensing unit configured to sense an electrical current value of the motor,
wherein the controller is configured to obtain at least one of a laundry weight or a laundry quality by an output of an output layer of a pre-trained machine-learning network based on an input to an input layer of the pre-trained machine-learning network that comprises a pattern of electrical current values sensed by the current sensing unit during an accelerated rotation of the washing tub,
wherein the pattern of the electrical current values is a data trend of the electrical current values,
wherein the controller is further configured to:
select a part of the pattern of the electrical current values that is sensed during a period in which a rotational speed of the motor is accelerated from a first rotational speed to the target speed and that is a part of the data trend of the electrical current values, and
use the selected part of the pattern of the electrical current values as the input to the pre-trained machine-learning network, and

wherein the controller is further configured to obtain the pattern of electrical current values to be used to determine the laundry quality after the period in which the pattern of electrical current values to be used to determine laundry weight is obtained.

2. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the acceleration gradient is 2.0 rpm/s.

3. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the acceleration gradient is a minimum value for accelerating the washing tub that is controllable by the controller.

4. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the acceleration gradient is maintained at a uniform value until the motor is accelerated to the target speed.

5. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the controller is further configured to determine a laundry clinging based on the output of the output layer of the pre-trained machine-learning network.

6. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein, based on the washing tub being rotated by one or more revolutions in a first direction within a range of rotation of the washing tub in which the electrical current value that is input to the pre-trained machine-learning network is sensed by the current sensing unit:
the laundry that is located at a lowermost position in the washing tub is raised to a first height by the rotation of the washing tub and is then dropped while being separated from the inner surface of the washing tub.

7. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising:
a speed sensing unit configured to sense the rotational speed of the motor.

8. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the target speed is 60 rotations per minute (rpm) to 80 rpm.

9. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the first rotational speed is 10 rpm to 20 rpm.

10. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising:
a speed sensing unit configured to sense the rotational speed of the motor,
wherein the target speed is set as a rotational speed of the washing tub at which the laundry clinging to the drum is maintained based on the washing tub rotating one or more revolutions in a first direction while maintaining the target speed, and
wherein the first rotational speed is 10 rpm to 20 rpm.

11. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the controller is further configured to use initialdata of electrical current values in the period in which the rotational speed of the motor is accelerated as the input to the pre-trained machine-learning network to determine the laundry weight.

12. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 11 , wherein the controller is further configured to use intermediate or last data of electrical current values in the period in which the rotational speed of the motor is accelerated as the input to the pre-trained machine-learning network to determine the laundry quality.

13. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 12 , wherein the controller is further configured to use pattern of electrical current values in a period in which the target speed is maintained as the input to the pre-trained machine-learning network to determine the laundry quality.

14. The laundry treatment apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the data trend of the electrical current values refers to a graphical trend of the electrical current values.

Assignees

• Lg Electronics Inc

Inventors

• Im Myunghun
• Jung Hwanjin
• Yu Seonhwa
• Kim Sunggyun
• Woo Kyungchul
• Kim Jaehyun

Classifications

• G06N3/0442

  characterised by memory or gating, e.g. long short-term memory [LSTM] or gated recurrent units [GRU] · CPC title

• G06N3/09

  Supervised learning · CPC title

• G06N3/0464

  Convolutional networks [CNN, ConvNet] · CPC title

• D06F2105/46

  Drum speed; Actuation of motors, e.g. starting or interrupting · CPC title

• D06F2103/46

  of the motor driving the drum · CPC title