Virtual line-following and retrofit method for autonomous vehicles
First Claim
1. A method of retrofitting or upgrading an automatic line-following vehicle (20) and adding the ability of following a notional virtual path (31, 32, 33), whereby the vehicle has a line sensor (24), motion actuators (27, 29), and a drive unit (51), the drive unit receiving a signal from the line sensor (24) and being adapted for driving the actuators (27, 29) such as to keep the line in the middle of the line sensor (24);
- the method including;
providing a localization unit (53) arranged for determining the position or of the pose of the vehicle (x, y, ϑ
);
providing a path following unit (55) arranged for determining an offset indicative of a measure of a lateral displacement between the instantaneous position of the mobile robot and the virtual path (31, 32, 33) and synthesizing a virtual line sensor output signal based on said offset;
providing said virtual sensor output to said drive unit (51).
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method for displacing a mobile robot on a virtual path within a workspace, comprising the generation of a synthetic offset, indicative of a lateral displacement between the instantaneous position of the mobile robot and the virtual path. The method may also include the generation of virtual tags and may be used in the retrofit or upgrade of autonomous vehicles of the line-following type.
12 Citations
8 Claims
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1. A method of retrofitting or upgrading an automatic line-following vehicle (20) and adding the ability of following a notional virtual path (31, 32, 33), whereby the vehicle has a line sensor (24), motion actuators (27, 29), and a drive unit (51), the drive unit receiving a signal from the line sensor (24) and being adapted for driving the actuators (27, 29) such as to keep the line in the middle of the line sensor (24);
- the method including;
providing a localization unit (53) arranged for determining the position or of the pose of the vehicle (x, y, ϑ
);
providing a path following unit (55) arranged for determining an offset indicative of a measure of a lateral displacement between the instantaneous position of the mobile robot and the virtual path (31, 32, 33) and synthesizing a virtual line sensor output signal based on said offset;
providing said virtual sensor output to said drive unit (51). - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
- the method including;
Specification