Robotic lawn mowing boundary determination

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9854737-B2
Application number	US-201615371618-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 7, 2016
Priority date	Oct 10, 2014
Publication date	Jan 2, 2018
Grant date	Jan 2, 2018

Abstract

A method of mowing an area with an autonomous mowing robot comprises storing, in non-transient memory of the robot, a set of geospatially referenced perimeter data corresponding to positions of the mowing robot as the mowing robot is guided about a perimeter of an area to be mowed, removing from the set of perimeter data one or more data points thereby creating a redacted data set and controlling the mowing robot to autonomously mow an area bounded by a boundary corresponding to the redacted data set, including altering direction of the mowing robot at or near a position corresponding to data in the redacted data set so as to redirect the robot back into the bounded area.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of mowing an area with a mowing robot, the method comprising:
storing, in a memory of the mowing robot, a set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates corresponding to positions of the mowing robot while being guided about a perimeter of the area to be mowed along a teaching path during a teaching mode;
identifying a boundary path comprising an alternative set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates comprising at least some of the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode and at least some alternative coordinates other than the set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode; and
controlling the mowing robot to autonomously mow along the boundary path.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the alternative set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates include data points determined by interpolation between discontinuous coordinates of the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the alternative set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates include data points determined by altering a portion of the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode that correspond to a perimeter path segment defining an interior angle less than 135 degrees, to define a smoothed boundary.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, prior to storing the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates, determining locations of discrete markers along the perimeter of the area to be mowed.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates are geospatially referenced during the teaching mode in relation to the discrete markers.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein storing the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates comprises marking cells of a two-dimensional data array as corresponding to the positions of the mowing robot.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising detecting if a removable handle is attached to the mowing robot.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising initiating the teaching mode in response to detecting that the removable handle is attached.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the boundary path comprising the alternative set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates comprises redacting at least some of the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode.

10. A mowing robot comprising:
a robot body carrying a grass cutter;
a drive system including a motorized wheel supporting the robot body;
a controller operably coupled to the motorized wheel for maneuvering the mowing robot to traverse a lawn area while cutting grass, the controller configured to:
in a teaching mode, store in memory a set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates corresponding to positions of the mowing robot during a teaching mode;
identify a boundary path comprising an alternative set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates comprising at least some of the set of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode and at least some alternative coordinates other than the set of geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode; and
control the mowing robot to autonomously mow along the boundary path.

11. The mowing robot of claim 10 , further comprising an emitter/receiver carried on the robot body and configured to communicate with perimeter markers bounding the lawn area in the teaching mode.

12. The mowing robot of claim 10 , further comprising a removable handle securable to the robot body and graspable by an operator to manually guide the mowing robot during the teaching mode.

13. The mowing robot of claim 12 , wherein the mowing robot is configured to detect if the removable handle is attached to the robot body.

14. The mowing robot of claim 13 , wherein the controller is configured to initiate the teaching mode in response to detecting that the removable handle is attached.

15. The mowing robot of claim 12 , wherein the removable handle comprises a kill switch in communication with the drive system, the kill switch configured to send a signal to halt mowing robot operations when the kill switch is not activated.

16. The mowing robot of claim 12 , wherein the removable handle comprises one or more pressure sensors to monitor pressure applied to the removable handle to turn the mowing robot.

17. The mowing robot of claim 12 , wherein the removable handle comprises a display.

18. The mowing robot of claim 17 , wherein the display is configured to show an alert in response to detecting that the mowing robot is in an unteachable state.

Assignees

• Irobot Corp

Inventors

• Yamauchi Brian
• Beaulieu Andrew
• Balutis Paul C

Classifications

• A01D34/008 Primary

  for automated or remotely controlled operation · CPC title

• Y10S901/01

  Mobile robot · CPC title

• A01B69/008

  automatic · CPC title

• A01D2101/00

  Lawn-mowers · CPC title

• G05D1/0221

  involving a learning process · CPC title