S. C. Johnson Son, Inc.

Seakee Chen

Thomas Jaworski

Jeffrey L Harwig

Fukyuen Cheng

Mark M Gipp

Kathleen M Laru

Kamfong Tam

Tread structures, wave motion navigational controls, and ramp up recovery controls are provided to an autonomous floor cleaner to reduce wheel slippage. The floor cleaner delivers liquid to the floor as part of the cleaning process. Wheels on the device are provided with relatively deep peripheral grooves to minimize the contact surfaces of a sprocket wheel and to accommodate the layer of liquid on the floor. In the event of wheel slippage, or to prevent wheel slippage, the device is designed to move forward with a slight side-to-side wave action caused by periodically altering the relative speeds of two drive wheels. There is also provided a slippage recovery mode where the drive wheels shut down or greatly slow when severe slippage is sensed, followed by a slow ramp up of speed.

Methods to prevent wheel slip in an autonomous floor cleaner

A robotic surface treating device that can perform carpet sweeping, hard-surface dry sweeping/wiping, and hard-surface sweeping/mopping is disclosed. The robotic surface treating device includes a sweeper brush, a dust bin for collecting debris from the brush, a reel-to-reel sheet of cleaning material, and a fluid delivery system for delivering fluid from a fluid reservoir onto the sheet of cleaning material and/or onto the surface to be treated. The dust bin, reel-to-reel sheet of cleaning material, and the fluid reservoir are separately installed from the top of the device, and may be separately removed for replacement.

Surface treating device with top load cartridge-based cleaning system

Growing community of inventors

Guangzhou, Switzerland

Seakee Chen