Robotire, Inc.

The Reinalt-thomas Corporation

William Mapes

Riyadir Alalami

Keegan Elliott

Scott Coburn

Victor Darolfi

Bradley J Vargo

Nathan Butler

Anoopkumar Sandip Sonar

Bradley Vargo

Vehicle dimension data describing dimensions of a vehicle are obtained, a robotic apparatus is moved to a position about the vehicle, a reference point of the vehicle is determined, and the robotic apparatus is caused to move to positions about the vehicle based on the reference point. The reference point is a center point of a selected wheel of the vehicle. A coordinate system of the robotic apparatus is aligned to the reference point of the selected wheel of the vehicle. Based on the aligned coordinate system of the robotic apparatus, operations are performed by the robotic apparatus to remove lug nuts from a wheel hub of the vehicle.

Robotic apparatus interaction with vehicle based on vehicle dimension translation

Described is a system (and method) for locating a center point of a lug nut for an automated vehicle wheel removal system. To improve the accuracy of the center point, the system may perform machine learning inferences using two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) image data. The system may process a 2D image to infer an initial center point, and potentially improve the accuracy by leveraging a 3D image. More particularly, the system may process a 3D image to infer a location of one or more edges (or edge points) around the perimeter of the lug nut and measure a set of distances between the initial center point and the located set of edges. The system may then refine (or adjust) the center point based on such measurements.

Locating a center point of a lug nut for an automated vehicle wheel removal system

Growing community of inventors

Grosse Ille Township, MI, United States of America

William Mapes