Pruning Robot System

• US 20170181383A1
• Filed: 05/26/2014
• Published: 06/29/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 05/26/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Institute Of Automation Chinese Academy Of Sciences
• Original Assignee: Institute Of Automation Chinese Academy Of Sciences
• Inventors: Shen, Zhen, Kang, Mengzhen, Li, Jiantong, Wang, Feiyue
• Granted Patent: US 10,278,333 B2
• Time in Patent Office: 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 device, 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 device, 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 device for positioning and navigating the robot by means 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 device of the robot and is used for storing 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 device for building a three-dimensional electronic map corresponding to the plantation through field-detection by the robot.

2. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that said system further comprises a manual control device, including a manual control platform and an instruction receiver, wherein the manual control platform manually selects the automatic or semi-automatic operating mode of the robot and actions of the robot are controlled through the 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 device connected to said central processing device 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 device 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 device connected to the central processing device and including two cameras, a geographical environment detection sensor and an image processing module 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 1, characterized in that 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.

7. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that said robot further comprises an obstacle avoidance module connected to the central processing device 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 device is built based on the perceptual information of the robot.

9. The system according to claim 3, characterized in that said building of the three-dimensional electronic map is to pair the scene graphs captured by the cameras of the robot and to record the height information with grids after calculating the heights thereof, then to draw a three-dimensional scene based on single-frame information, and to connect all data points into triangle meshes to reproduce the topology of the original three-dimensional surface.