Electrical charging system, electrical charging controlling method, robot apparatus, electrical charging device, electrical charging controlling program and recording medium
First Claim
1. An electrical charging system including a robot apparatus and an electrical charging device, said robot apparatus having built-in a power supply unit for driving and adapted for acting autonomously responsive to an inner state, said electrical charging device electrically charging said power supply unit, wherein said electrical charging device includes a marker provided at a predetermined position;
- said robot apparatus including imaging means for imaging a surrounding state;
storage means having the information on the position of said marker pre-stored therein;
position vector calculating means for calculating the distance and the direction to said marker from the information on said marker position stored in said storage means and from an image including the marker position, photographed by said imaging means;
operation controlling means for performing control for causing movement of said robot apparatus towards said electrical charging device depending on the distance and the direction to said marker calculated by said position vector calculating means.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
A robot apparatus 1 is to be electrically charged autonomously. An electrical charging device 100 is provided with two markers, namely a main marker 118 and a sub-marker 119, and the heights of the markers are pre-stored in the robot apparatus. When the robot apparatus 1 is to find the direction and the distance to the electrical charging device 100, a CCD camera 20 finds the direction vector of the marker from the photographed image. This direction vector is transformed into a position vector of a camera coordinate system {c} and further into a position vector of the robot coordinate system {b}. The coordinate in the height-wise direction in the robot coordinate system {b} is compared to the pre-stored height to find the distance between the markers and the robot apparatus and the direction of the robot apparatus.
133 Citations
25 Claims
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1. An electrical charging system including a robot apparatus and an electrical charging device, said robot apparatus having built-in a power supply unit for driving and adapted for acting autonomously responsive to an inner state, said electrical charging device electrically charging said power supply unit, wherein
said electrical charging device includes a marker provided at a predetermined position; -
said robot apparatus including imaging means for imaging a surrounding state;
storage means having the information on the position of said marker pre-stored therein;
position vector calculating means for calculating the distance and the direction to said marker from the information on said marker position stored in said storage means and from an image including the marker position, photographed by said imaging means;
operation controlling means for performing control for causing movement of said robot apparatus towards said electrical charging device depending on the distance and the direction to said marker calculated by said position vector calculating means. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. An electrical charging controlling method for an electrical charging system including a robot apparatus and an electrical charging device, said robot apparatus having built-in a power supply unit for driving and adapted for acting autonomously responsive to an inner state thereof, said electrical charging device electrically charging said power supply unit, said controlling method comprising:
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an imaging step of imaging a surrounding state;
a storage means for pre-storing the information on the position of said marker;
a position vector calculating step of calculating the distance and the direction to said marker from an image of said marker provided to an electrical charging device, photographed by said imaging step and from information on the position of said marker pre-stored in storage means; and
a movement controlling step of performing control for causing movement of said robot apparatus towards said electrical charging device depending on the distance and the direction to said marker calculated by said position vector calculating step. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A robot apparatus having built-in a power supply unit for driving and adapted for acting autonomously responsive to an inner state thereof;
- said robot apparatus including
imaging means for imaging a surrounding state;
storage means having pre-stored the information on the position of a marker provided to an electrical charging device electrically charging said power supply unit;
position vector calculating means for calculating the distance and the direction to said marker from the information on said marker position stored in said storage means and from an image including the marker position photographed by said imaging means; and
operation controlling means for performing control for causing movement of said robot apparatus towards said electrical charging device depending on the distance and the direction to said marker calculated by said position vector calculating means. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
- said robot apparatus including
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22. An electrical charging device for a robot apparatus having a charging battery comprising:
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a substantially rectangular outer casing, the height of which is gradually decreased from one longitudinal end to the opposite side longitudinal end thereof;
connection means electrically connected to said robot apparatus for supplying at least the electrical power; and
a marker recognizable by the robot apparatus. - View Dependent Claims (23)
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24. In an electrical charging system including a robot apparatus and an electrical charging device, said robot apparatus having built-in a power supply unit for driving and adapted for acting autonomously responsive to an inner state, a program for allowing said robot apparatus to execute charging processing of electrically charging said power supply unit, said program comprising:
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an imaging step of imaging a surrounding state;
a position vector calculating step of calculating the distance and direction to a marker from an image of said marker provided to an electrical charging device, photographed by said imaging step, and from the pre-stored information on said marker; and
a movement controlling step of performing control for causing movement of said robot apparatus towards said electrical charging device depending on the distance and direction to said marker calculated by said position vector calculating step.
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25. In an electrical charging system including a robot apparatus and an electrical charging device, said robot apparatus having built-in a power supply unit for driving and adapted for acting autonomously responsive to an inner state, a recording medium having recorded thereon a program for allowing said robot apparatus to execute charging processing of electrically charging said power supply unit, said program comprising:
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an imaging step of imaging a surrounding state;
a position vector calculating step of calculating the distance and direction to a marker from an image of said marker provided to an electrical charging device, photographed by said imaging step, and from the pre-stored information on said marker; and
a movement controlling step of performing control for causing movement of said robot apparatus towards said electrical charging device depending on the distance and direction to said marker calculated by said position vector calculating step.
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Specification