Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.

Panasonic Electric Works Co., Ltd.

Hiroyuki Fujii

Tomoharu Nakahara

Tatsuo Sakai

Tsuyoshi Yamane

Yukihiko Kitano

Hidekazu Araki

Hitoshi Kitano

Haisong Gu

An autonomously moving robot that drives while evading an obstacle by an environment information acquisitioner. The information acquisitioner includes an imager that takes an image of a circumference on a driving route, an image recognition processor that extracts an area having a property relating to a region of a human body, a ranger that measures a range and an orientation to an object existing in the circumference on the driving route, a range information analyzer that obtains a shape of the object, and an environment recognizer that recognizes the environment information on the driving route. The environment recognizer compares the area extracted in the image recognition processor with the object recognized in the range information analyzer, and recognizes the object as a person when both of them agree with each other.

Autonomously moving robot

A 3-dimensional object recognition method, by use of which three-dimensional position and posture of an object can be accurately recognized at high speed, comprises the steps of (A) taking a pair of first and second images for making a stereo image of the object; (B) detecting a two-dimensional feature of the object on each of the first and second images; (C) evaluating a degree of reliability of the result of the step (B) by comparing with a model data of the object; (D) making a correspondence of the two-dimensional feature between the first and second images according to a stereoscopic measurement principle; (E) evaluating a degree of reliability of the result of the step (D) by comparing the two-dimensional feature detected on the first image with the corresponding two-dimensional feature detected on the second image; (F) recognizing the three-dimensional position and posture of the object according to information in three dimensions of the two-dimensional feature obtained by the correspondence; and (G) evaluating a degree of reliability of the recognized three-dimensional position and posture. It is preferred to use the 3-dimensional object recognition method to a bin-picking system for picking up an article from a bin, in which a plurality of articles are heaped up in confusion, and carrying the picked-up article to a required position.

3-dimensional object recognition method and bin-picking system using the method

Growing community of inventors

Higashiosaka, Japan

Hiroyuki Fujii