Group robot system, and sensing robot and base station used therefor

• US 20060217843A1
• Filed: 05/24/2006
• Published: 09/28/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/20/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Hara, Keita, Hamamoto, Masaki, Ohta, Yoshiji, Ohta, Kenji
• Granted Patent: US 7,283,893 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/248
• CPC Class Codes: B25J 9/1682 Dual arm manipulator; Coordination of several manipulators
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/39155 Motion skill, relate sensor data to certain situation and motion
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/39168 Multiple robots searching an object
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/104 involving a plurality of aircrafts, e.g. formation flying traffic control systems for aircraft G08G5/00

Abstract

Communication system of a group robot system is made hierarchical, having a base station as an uppermost layer and a plurality of layers formed by a plurality of sensing robots, and the plurality of sensing robots are controlled such that a sensing robot belonging to an upper layer of the hierarchical structure has higher sensing resolution than a sensing robot belonging to a lower layer of the hierarchical structure. Thus, a group robot system capable of efficiently searching for an object can be obtained.

Claims

1-10. -10. (canceled)

11. A sensing robot searching for an object under control by a base station, wherein

a plurality of said sensing robots are used for searching for said object, and each of said plurality of sensing robots can be controlled by said base station such that manner related to searching of said object by each of said plurality of sensing robots differs in accordance with distance from said base station.

12-22. -22. (canceled)

23. A sensing robot searching for an object under control by a base station, used in a robot system in which communication system is set to have a hierarchical structure having said base station as an uppermost layer and a plurality of layers formed by a plurality of said sensing robots,

said sensing robot having a function of transmitting information related to searching of said object from the sensing robot belonging to a layer lower than itself to an upper layer of said hierarchical structure, and a function of transmitting information related to operation of the sensing robot belonging to a layer lower than itself to one layer lower than said hierarchical structure, and

said sensing robot being controllable by said base station such that, when said object is searched for, manner of searching of said object of each of said plurality of sensing robots differ layer by layer of said hierarchical structure.

24-33. -33. (canceled)

34. A sensing robot searching for an object under control by a base station, controlled by said base station such that manner related to searching of said object by sensing robot is changed stage by stage of searching of said object.

35-40. -40. (canceled)

41. A sensing robot searching for an object under control by a base station, wherein

when a plurality of said sensing robots search for said object, the sensing robots are controlled by said base station such that the sensing robots search for said object by moving along with movement of said base station, while maintaining tolerable range of positional relation with said base station.

42-44. -44. (canceled)

45. A sensing robot used for searching for an object under control by a base station, wherein

when a plurality of said sensing robots search for said object, the manner related to searching of said object is controlled differently from other sensing robots.

46. (canceled)