System with at least two floor processing fixtures

• US 10,562,177 B2
• Filed: 06/14/2018
• Issued: 02/18/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 06/16/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vorwerk & Company Interholding Gesellschaft Mit Beschrã¤Nkter Haftung (Vorwerk & Company KG)
• Original Assignee: Vorwerk & Company Interholding Gesellschaft Mit Beschrã¤Nkter Haftung (Vorwerk & Company KG)
• Inventors: Hackert, Georg, Helmich, Martin, Hillen, Lorenz, Holz, Christian, Isenberg, Gerhard, Koetz, Hendrik, Mosebach, Andrej, Ortmann, Roman, Dulinski, Robin
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Dalena
• Application Number:
  US16/008,161
• Publication Number:
  US 20180361569A1
• Time in Patent Office: 614 Days
• Field of Search: 700245, 700248, 152463
• CPC Class Codes: A01B 79/00 Methods for working soil
• CPC Class Codes: A01D 34/008 for automated or remotely controlled operation
• CPC Class Codes: A47L 2201/06 Control of the cleaning action for autonomous devices; Automatic detection of the surface condition before, during or after cleaning
• CPC Class Codes: B25J 9/0084 comprising a plurality of manipulators
• CPC Class Codes: B25J 9/1666 Avoiding collision or forbidden zones
• CPC Class Codes: B25J 9/1689 Teleoperation
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0027 involving a plurality of vehicles, e.g. fleet or convoy travelling fleet control of land vehicles from a control room G05D1/0297; traffic control systems for road vehicles G08G1/00; for marine craft G08G3/00; for aircraft G08G5/00
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0212 with means for defining a desired trajectory involving a plurality of land vehicles G05D1/0287
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2816 Controlling appliance services of a home automation network by calling their functionalities arrangements in telecontrol or telemetry systems for selectively calling a substation from a main station; in which substation desired apparatus is selected for applying a control signal thereto or for obtaining measured values therefrom H04Q9/00

Abstract

A system has at least two floor processing fixtures of one or several automatically moving floor processing devices for the automatically controlled processing of a surface. In order to further develop such a system in particular with the aim of having the floor processing fixtures advantageously interact and support each other, the system has a shared database allocated to the floor processing fixtures, which is stored in an external memory designed separately from the floor processing device, and in which operational activities for the floor processing fixtures are planned according to defined rules, as well as a central computing device allocated to the database, which plans operational activities according to defined rules.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

at least two floor processing fixtures of at least one automatically moving floor processing device for the automatically controlled processing of a surface,

a shared database allocated to the floor processing fixtures, the database being stored in an external memory designed separately from the at least one floor processing device, and in which operational activities for the floor processing fixtures are planned according to defined rules, and

a central computing device allocated to the database, the central computing device being configured for planning operational activities according to the defined rules,

wherein the database contains if-then links between defined events and resultantly initiated operational activities of the floor processing fixtures, wherein an operational activity of a floor processing fixture can only be initiated if a defined event arises at a specific time and wherein within the shared database at least two operational activities comprise a sequence of activities, in which a subsequent operational activity depends on an earlier operational activity.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the floor processing fixtures are formed on the same floor processing device or on two different floor processing devices.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the central computing device is configured to plan operational activities of the floor processing fixtures based on time and/or event.

4. The system according to claim 1, wherein the central computing device is configured to plan two or more operational activities of one or several floor processing fixtures, with one of the operational activities being based on the other of the operational activities.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein a subsequent activity is stored for an operational activity stored in the database, wherein the subsequent activity is defined based on a failure of the performed operational activity.

6. The system according to claim 5, wherein the subsequent activity is selected from the group consisting of a repeated operational activity, an operational activity of another floor processing fixture, a fault analysis and a user notification.

7. A method for operating a system with at least two floor processing fixtures of one or several automatically moving floor processing devices, comprising the following steps:

processing a surface by the floor processing fixtures in an automatically controlled manner,

planning operational activities for the floor processing fixtures according to defined rules by a central computing device of the system, and

storing the planned operational activities in a shared database that is allocated to the floor processing fixtures, wherein the database is stored in an external memory designed separately from the floor processing device,

wherein the database contains if-then links between defined events and resultantly initiated operational activities of the floor processing fixtures, wherein an operational activity of a floor processing fixture can only be initiated if a defined event arises at a specific time and wherein within the shared database at least two operational activities comprise a sequence of activities in which a subsequent operational activity depends on an earlier operational activity.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the operational activities of the floor processing fixtures are planned based on time and/or event and/or wherein two or more operational activities of one or several floor processing fixtures are planned one based on the other.

9. The method according to claim 7, wherein a defined subsequent activity is performed depending on a failure of a performed operational activity, and wherein the defined subsequent activity is selected from the group consisting of a repeated operational activity, an operational activity of another floor processing fixture, a fault analysis and a user notification.