Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Taku Kitahara

Hiroshi Okamoto

Koichi Kudo

Ryota Yamashina

Hiroshi Shimura

Eichi Koizumi

Kento Hosaka

A traveling body includes a range sensor and circuitry. The range sensor is disposed on a front face of the traveling body in a traveling direction in which the traveling body travels on a road surface and disposed obliquely downward at an inclination angle relative to the road surface. The circuitry determines presence of a continuous obstacle in a case where measurement results of a plurality of planes scanned by the range sensor include a plurality of feature values indicating unevenness relative to the road surface similar to each other. The circuitry generates an obstacle map of a front region of the traveling body not scanned by the range sensor, based on sequential feature information indicating that a predetermined number of feature values indicating the unevenness are sequentially present; and controls the traveling body to travel on the road surface based on the obstacle map.

Traveling body which detects obstacles and generates an obstacle map

A crawler type traveling body includes a drive wheel, an in-wheel motor incorporated in the drive wheel, a plurality of rotating wheels disposed below the drive wheel, a crawler, and a tensioner. The crawler is wound around the drive wheel and the rotating wheels and configured to be rotated by the drive wheel. The tensioner is coupled to a drive shaft of the in-wheel motor and configured to press the drive wheel against the crawler and apply tension to the crawler.

Crawler type traveling body and traveling apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Taku Kitahara