The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 14, 2000
Filed:
Feb. 26, 1998
Yuichi Kawakami, Itami, JP;
Minolta Co., Ltd., Osaka, JP;
Abstract
An autonomous vehicle capable of traveling and stopping parallel to a wall includes right and left driving wheels receiving driving force to be driven independently, a dependent wheel for supporting the autonomous vehicle together with the driving wheels for a straightforward movement and a U-turn, a motor for driving the right and left driving wheels, a coupling mechanism for transmitting the rotation of the motor to the driving wheels, an encoder for detecting the rotation amount and velocity of the motor, a gyro sensor for detecting the direction of the autonomous vehicle, a distance measurement sensor for measuring the distance to a right or left object of interest, and a controller for controlling the autonomous vehicle through the motor and the driving wheels. The controller receives the output of the encoder, calculates a control value for the driving wheels based on the rotation amount and rotation velocity of the motor, and determines that the autonomous vehicle travels parallel to the wall if the ratios of a time period to turn the autonomous vehicle rightward and a time period to turn the vehicle leftward in a prescribed time period are equal based on the control value.