Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Jtekt Corporation

Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg

Toyota Jidosah Kabushki Kaisha

Yoshiaki Asahara

Hidenori Yabushita

Kazuhiro Mima

Takashi Yamamoto

Takemitsu Mori

Hideki Kajima

Wolfram Burgard

Masayoshi Asakura

Mark Van Loock

Tatsuhiro Yamamoto

Masafumi Takahashi

Bastian Steder

Giorgio Grisetti

The present disclosure provides a charger capable of improving the portability thereof. The charger is a charger including a second charging terminal configured to be magnetically connected to a first charging terminal provided on a mobile body to supply power to the first charging terminal, the charger further including: a stand; a suspension member configured to suspend the second charging terminal from the stand; and a displacement inducing mechanism configured to induce, in order to reduce a magnetic connecting force between the first and the second charging terminals, relative displacement between the first and the second charging terminals in a direction different from an axial direction of the second charging terminal.

Charger, charging system, and method for disconnecting charging terminal

A path planning device includes: data acquisition means for acquiring position data of an obstacle; storage means for storing the position data of the obstacle; and path setting means for setting, based on an environmental map, the acquired position data of the obstacle and the position data of the obstacle stored in the storage means, a moving path to a target position, and regularly updating the moving path. The path setting means sets, when the path setting means determines that the acquired obstacle is positioned on a first moving path to the target position after the first moving path is set, a second moving path in which there is no obstacle on a moving path. The storage means stores the position data of the obstacle on the first moving path when the moving load along the second moving path is larger than the moving load along the first moving path.

Path planning device, path planning method, and program

A moving robot including: actuators at least including a motor for movement; a reading unit configured to read a tag installed in an environment, at least one of information on an allowable operation time of the actuators and information on an allowable operation amount of the actuators being described in the tag; and a controller configured to prohibit or limit execution of a predetermined task whose execution has already been accepted, the predetermined task being operated using at least one of the actuators, until the time when the reading unit reads the tag, and release the prohibition or the limitation and execute the task in such a way that an operation time and an operation amount do not exceed the allowable operation time and the allowable operation amount described in the tag after the reading unit has read the tag is provided.

Moving robot, method of controlling moving robot, and control program

A steering apparatus includes a steered shaft; a rack housing; a ball screw nut; a bearing disposed between an inner peripheral surface of the rack housing and an outer peripheral surface of the ball screw nut, the bearing supporting the ball screw nut such that the ball screw nut is rotatable with respect to the rack housing; and a tubular rack boot covering an axial end portion of the rack housing. The rack housing includes a partition wall protruding radially inward from a cylindrical inner peripheral surface of the rack housing and separating a ball screw chamber housing the ball screw nut and an inner chamber of the rack boot. The partition wall has a through-hole through which the steered shaft extends, and a drain passage provided vertically below the through-hole and providing communication between the ball screw chamber and the inner chamber of the rack boot.

Steering apparatus

To improve the accuracy of the self position estimation of a mobile robot. A robot measures a distance to an object in the mobile environment by using a range sensor. An environmental map storage unit stores an environmental map containing a plurality of map data each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of measurement directions from which a point in the mobile environment is to be observed. A self position estimation unit selects a map data corresponding to a measurement direction in which a distance to the object is measured by the range sensor from the plurality of map data. Then, the self position estimation unit estimates a self position of the mobile robot based on the selected map data and range data obtained by the range sensor.

Autonomous mobile robot, self position estimation method, environmental map generation method, environmental map generation apparatus, and data structure for environmental map

To provide an autonomous moving body capable of moving with efficiency along a path toward a travel end point while avoiding a collision with a moving obstacle, its control method, and its control system. An autonomous moving body in accordance with the present invention includes means to create a traveling path of the autonomous moving body that extends from a travel start point to a travel end point, means to calculate a point at which a moving obstacle located within the moving area crosses the created traveling path of the autonomous moving body as a collision prediction point, means to calculate a first passage time period during which the moving obstacle passes through the collision prediction point, and means to calculate a second passage time period during which the autonomous moving body passes through the collision prediction point. Further, if at least a part of the second passage time period overlaps the first passage time period, the traveling speed of the autonomous moving body is adjusted so that the second passage time period does not overlap the first passage time period.

Autonomous moving body, its control method, and control system

A trajectory tracking control system according to the invention controls a robot () to track a target path (). In this system, the target path () is approximated to an arc, and the curvature of the arc is calculated. At this time, the curvature is calculated in accordance with the moving speed of the robot (). Then, the control of the robot () is set in accordance with the calculated curvature.

Trajectory tracking control system and method for mobile unit

To carry out satisfactory object recognition in a short time. An object recognition method in accordance with an exemplary aspect of the present invention is an object recognition method for recognizing a target object by using a preliminarily-created object model. The object recognition method generates a range image of an observed scene, detects interest points from the range image, extracts first features, the first features being features of an area containing the interest points, carries out a matching process between the first features and second features, the second features being features of an area in the range image of the object model, calculates a transformation matrix based on a result of the matching process, the transformation matrix being for projecting the second features on a coordinate system of the observed scene, and recognizes the target object with respect to the object model based on the transformation matrix.

Object recognition method, object recognition apparatus, and autonomous mobile robot

To generate an optimal path in a search space represented by a grid. A path search device includes: an edge generation section that generates edges extending to neighboring nodes located at least forward and diagonally forward right and left of a focus node, assuming that each grid point is a node and that a minimum cost node among end nodes each located at an end of the edges is the focus node, when a cost from a start point to a given node is a cost of the given node; an edge cost calculation/readout section that reads out a shortest distance from a reference node to the neighboring node (first distance) and a shortest distance from the reference node to the focus node (second distance) from a database, assuming that a node obtained by tracing back a predetermined number of nodes from the focus node in a direction toward the start point along the path is the reference node; a path cost calculation section that calculates a cost of a path from the start point to the neighboring node as a sum of costs of edges constituting the path; and a path determination section that selects a path having a minimum cost from the start point to the end point.

Growing community of inventors

Obu, Japan

Yoshiaki Asahara