Movable body system

• US 8,548,665 B2
• Filed: 03/16/2011
• Issued: 10/01/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/10/2010
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Yaskawa Denki
• Original Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Yaskawa Denki
• Inventors: Izumi, Tetsuro, Kouno, Dai
• Primary Examiner(s): PHAM, HOA Q
• Application Number:
  US13/048,906
• Publication Number:
  US 20110304858A1
• Time in Patent Office: 930 Days
• Field of Search: 356614-623, 700/259, 901/1, 901/47, 318/587, 701/1, 701/23, 701/25, 701200-202, 701/26, 701/523, 701/514, 701/408
• US Class Current: 701/23
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/024 in combination with a laser lasers per se H01S
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0253 extracting relative motion information from a plurality of images taken successively, e.g. visual odometry, optical flow determining position or orientation from images G06T7/70

Abstract

A movable body system includes a movable body to which an image pickup apparatus is attached; an image analyzer that performs image matching between the image captured by the image pickup apparatus and an image, which is previously captured on the travel path of the movable body; a wall-surface detector that detects directions of the movable body with respect to wall surfaces, which are arranged along the travel path, and distances between the wall surfaces and the movable body; and a traveling-direction calculator that detects a shift of the movable body with respect to the travel path from an output of the image analyzer or the wall-surface detector, and calculates a traveling direction to cause the movable body to travel on the travel path.

Claims

1. A movable body system comprising:

an image pickup apparatus configured to capture an image of an external environment;

a movable body to which the image pickup apparatus is attached, the movable body including a driving wheel and being provided to travel along a predetermined travel path, the image pickup apparatus being configured to capture the image of the external environment so that an image-capturing direction of the image pickup apparatus is changed in accordance with a direction of the driving wheel;

an image analyzer that performs image matching between the image captured by the image pickup apparatus and an image, which is previously captured on the travel path of the movable body;

a wall-surface detector configured to detect that an object is a wall surface if a shape of the object that reflects laser light emitted from the movable body has a straight portion with a length equal to or larger than a predetermined length in plan view, the wall-surface detector being configured to detect a direction of the movable body with respect to a wall surface, which is arranged along the travel path, and a distance between the wall surface and the movable body; and

a traveling-direction calculator that detects a shift of the movable body with respect to the travel path from an output of the image analyzer or the wall-surface detector, and calculates a traveling direction to cause the movable body to travel on the travel path, the traveling-direction calculator being configured to change a source for calculating the traveling direction from the image analyzer to the wall-surface detector if the traveling-direction calculator receives, from the image analyzer, a signal that indicates that the image captured by the image pickup apparatus does not match the image previously captured on the travel path of the movable body.

2. The movable body system according to claim 1,

wherein the image analyzer transmits a signal indicative of failure of the image matching if the image matching is disabled between the image captured by the image pickup apparatus and the image previously captured on the travel path, to the traveling-direction calculator, and changes a source, from which the traveling-direction calculator receives an output signal, from the image analyzer to the wall-surface detector.

3. The movable body system according to claim 1,

wherein the wall-surface detector emits laser light and detects a position of the wall surface from reflected laser light.

4. The movable body system according to claim 3,

wherein when the wall-surface detector detects that the wall surface contains regions with different distances to the travel path in plan view, the wall-surface detector derives an average distance of the distances between the regions or extension lines of the regions and the movable body, as a distance between the wall surface and the movable body.