Autonomous coverage robot

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8972061-B2
Application number	US-201313790867-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 8, 2013
Priority date	Nov 2, 2012
Publication date	Mar 3, 2015
Grant date	Mar 3, 2015

Abstract

A mobile floor cleaning robot includes a robot body supported by a drive system configured to maneuver the robot over a floor surface. The robot also includes a cleaning system supported by the robot body, an imaging sensor disposed on the robot body, and a controller in communicates with the drive system and the imaging sensor. The controller receives a sequence of images of the floor surface; each image has an array of pixels. For each image, the controller segments the image into color blobs by color quantizing pixels of the image, determines a spatial distribution of each color of the image based on corresponding pixel locations; and for each image color, identifies areas of the image having a threshold spatial distribution for that color. The controller then tracks a location of the color blobs with respect to the imaging sensor across the sequence of images.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of operating mobile floor cleaning robot, the method comprising:
receiving, at a controller, a sequence of images of a floor surface from an imaging sensor in communication with the controller, each image having an array of pixels;
for each image, segmenting the image into color blobs, using the controller, by:
color quantizing pixels of the image;
determining a spatial distribution of each color of the image based on corresponding pixel locat…

Assignees

• Irobot Corp

Inventors

• Rosenstein Michael T
• Chiappetta Mark
• Schnittman Mark
• Pastore Andrew

Classifications

• Y10S901/01

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• G06T2207/10048

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06T7/11

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06T2207/10016

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06T2207/30261

  Physics · mapped topic