Pruning robot system

• US 10,278,333 B2
• Filed: 05/26/2014
• Issued: 05/07/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 05/26/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Institute Of Automation Chinese Academy Of Sciences (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
• Original Assignee: Institute Of Automation Chinese Academy Of Sciences (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
• Inventors: Shen, Zhen, Kang, Mengzhen, Li, Jiantong, Wang, Feiyue
• Primary Examiner(s): Elchanti, Hussein
• Assistant Examiner(s): Berns, Michael A
• Application Number:
  US15/314,068
• Publication Number:
  US 20170181383A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,807 Days
• CPC Class Codes: A01G 3/08 Other tools for pruning, branching or delimbing standing trees
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/46 the supplementary measurement being of a radio-wave signal type
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/48 by combining or switching between position solutions derived from the satellite radio beacon positioning system and position solutions derived from a further system
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0011 associated with a remote control arrangement
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0088 characterized by the autonomous decision making process, e.g. artificial intelligence, predefined behaviours using knowledge based models G06N5/00
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0261 using magnetic plots
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0274 using mapping information stored in a memory device navigation using map-matching G01C21/30
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0278 using satellite positioning signals, e.g. GPS
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/028 using a RF signal

Abstract

A pruning robot system, which comprises: a signal tag device (2) for detecting and storing information of trees and crops and positioning information, and assisting positioning; a robot (1) comprising a central processing device (10) for storing and analyzing data information of each part of the robot (1) and issuing action instructions to each part of the robot (1), and a positioning and navigating device (11) for positioning and navigating the robot (1), and for planning a path and providing obstacle-avoiding navigation for the robot (1) according to an electronic map; a cloud platform terminal (3), which is in connection and communication with the central processing device (10) of the robot (1) and is used for storing data of trees and crops as well as detection data of the robot (1), and for planning a path for the robot (1) through computing and experimenting according to the information data; a map building device (4) for building a three-dimensional electronic map corresponding to the plantation through field-detection by the robot (1). The pruning robot system realizes positioning in the plantation, robot (1) path planning, pruning information collection and automatic pruning.

Claims

1. A pruning robot system, characterized in that said system comprises:

a signal tag means, including RFID, GPS and WIFI, for detecting and storing information of trees and crops and positioning information, and for assisting positioning;

a robot, which comprises;

a central processing means, for storing and analyzing data information of each part of the robot and issuing action instructions to each part of the robot;

a positioning and navigating means for positioning and navigating the robot by use of the RFID, GPS and WIFI, and for planning a path and providing obstacle-avoiding navigation for the robot according to an electronic map;

a cloud platform and terminal, which is in connection and communication with the central processing means of the robot and is used for storing information data including data of trees and crops as well as detection data of the robot, and for planning a path for the robot through computing and experimenting according to the information data;

a map building means for building a three-dimensional electronic map corresponding to a plantation through field-detection by the robot,

said robot further comprises a RFID reader connected to the central processing device for detecting RFID tags of trees and crops and reading data in the tags,

wherein, if coordinate data within an RFID tag detected by the RFID reader matches with the path of the robot determined by the cloud platform, then the signal tag means reads data on the RFID tag to determine if pruning has occurred.

2. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that said system further comprises a manual control means, including a manual control platform and an instruction receiver, wherein the manual control platform manually selects an automatic or a semi-automatic operating mode of the robot and actions of the robot are controlled through the manual control platform when the robot is in a semi-automatic operating mode;

the instruction receiver is on the robot, receiving instructions from the control platform, and then controlling in accordance with the instructions.

3. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that said robot further comprises a driving means connected to said central processing means for driving said robot to walk.

4. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that said robot further comprises a pruning arm connected to the central processing means and having a sleeve-type structure, with a pruning scissors at an end thereof.

5. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that said robot further comprises a visual imaging monitoring means connected to the central processing means and including two cameras, a geographical environment detection sensor and an image processing means which are used for three-dimensional imaging during building of the map, road condition monitoring and image analysis during pruning.

6. The system according to claim 5, characterized in that said building of the three-dimensional electronic map includes pairing scene graphs captured by the two cameras and recording height information with grids after calculating the heights of the scene graphs, then generating a three-dimensional scene based on single-frame information, and connecting data points into triangle meshes to produce a topology of a portion of the plantation.

7. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that said robot further comprises an obstacle avoidance means connected to the central processing means and including a plurality of distance measuring sensors and image sensors for avoiding obstacles during walking of the robot.

8. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that the three-dimensional electronic map in the map building means is built based on a perceptual information of the robot.

9. The system according to claim 1, wherein the map building means is disposed remotely from the robot.

10. The system according to claim 1, wherein the map building means builds a map at least partially based on pseudo-color enhancement of captured images of the plantation.

11. The system according to claim 1, wherein the cloud platform includes the map building means.

12. The system according to claim 1, wherein the RFID reader is configured so as to update data in the RFID tag to indicate if pruning has been performed by the robot.

13. The system according to claim 1, further comprising a plurality of the robot,

wherein the cloud platform and terminal calculates a path for each of the plurality of robots.