Detailed Description
The technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the drawings in the embodiments of the present invention, and it is obvious that the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present invention, and not all of the embodiments. All other embodiments, which can be derived by a person skilled in the art from the embodiments given herein without making any creative effort, shall fall within the protection scope of the present invention.
It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "secured to" another element, it can be directly on the other element or intervening elements may also be present. When an element is referred to as being "connected" to another element, it can be directly connected to the other element or intervening elements may be present. As used in this specification, the terms "vertical," "horizontal," "left," "right," "up," "down," "inner," "outer," "bottom," and the like are used in the orientation or positional relationship indicated in the drawings for convenience in describing the invention and for simplicity in description, and do not indicate or imply that the referenced device or element must have a particular orientation, be constructed and operated in a particular orientation, and are therefore not to be considered limiting. Furthermore, the terms "first," "second," and the like are used for descriptive purposes only and are not to be construed as indicating or implying relative importance.
Unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs. The terminology used in the description of the invention herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the invention. As used herein, the term "and/or" includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items. In addition, the technical features involved in the different embodiments of the present invention described below may be combined with each other as long as they do not conflict with each other.
Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a recharge guiding system according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in fig. 1, the recharging guide system is composed of a recharging apparatus 200 and a recharging seat 100 used with the recharging apparatus for charging the recharging apparatus.
The recharging device may be any suitable type of smart device that can perform an automatic recharging function, such as a robot, an AGV cart, or a sweeping robot. In fig. 1, the recharging apparatus is exemplified by a sweeping robot.
Wherein, refill seat 100 includes: a recharging seat body 110, a guiding device 120 and a charging contact 130.
The refill seat body 110 may specifically have any shape and volume. The shell is formed by enclosure of shells made of one or more materials such as plastics and metals. A control circuit board may be accommodated and fixed in the recharging base body 110 to implement functions such as charging.
The guiding device 120 is disposed on the refill seat body 110 for emitting a guiding laser signal outwards. The guiding laser signal is used for guiding the recharging device and assisting the recharging device to determine the current orientation of the recharging seat.
In particular, the guiding means may be composed of a driving circuit and at least one guiding lamp. The driving circuit is accommodated in the outer shell and used for receiving a power supply and driving the guide lamp to be lightened according to the control signal so as to emit a laser signal outwards.
The guiding lamp is arranged on the surface of the outer shell and emits a guiding laser signal. The guiding lamp may in particular be selected for use with any suitable type of laser emitting device, such as a semiconductor laser diode or the like.
Of course, one or more different structures or functional modules may be added to the guiding device according to the needs of the actual situation, for example, a window for placing a guiding lamp is provided.
The charging contacts 130 are a set of metal contacts disposed on the outer surface of the recharging base body, and may have any suitable type of connection structure, so that when the recharging apparatus is moved into the charging position of the recharging base, the recharging apparatus can be electrically connected to the charging contacts 130 for charging.
With continued reference to fig. 1, the recharging device 200 may then include: a device body 210 and a lidar 220.
Similarly to the refill seat body, the device body 210 can also be designed into any suitable shape structure with a corresponding volume according to the actual requirement. In order to realize the function of free movement, a traveling mechanism 230 (e.g., wheels as shown in fig. 1) is further provided on the apparatus main body.
The inside of the main body 210 also accommodates and fixes a control circuit board for realizing intelligent control of the main body 210 and executing one or more logic determination steps to complete various different work tasks.
And a charging interface which is designed to be matched with the charging contact 130 of the recharging seat is also arranged on the surface of the equipment main body. From this, through the contact and the interface that charges of supporting design, can realize recharging the charging of equipment when recharging equipment removes to recharging the seat.
Lidar 220 is a sensor device used by a backfill device to gather external information. The three-dimensional information of the external environment is obtained by continuously emitting laser signals to the outside and determining the distance between recharging equipment and an external object according to the collected laser reflection signals by utilizing the principle of laser reflection.
As shown in fig. 1, for a flat device body, the laser radar 220 may be disposed on an upper surface of the device body and rotate at a predetermined rotation speed, so as to scan and collect laser signals from various directions.
When the laser radar collects, scans and collects the guide laser signal continuously sent by the guide device (the wavelength of the guide laser signal is matched with the laser radar), the recharging equipment can determine the position of the recharging seat according to the guide laser signal, and the recharging seat is automatically moved to the recharging seat for charging. Due to the better anti-attenuation capability of the laser signal, the laser signal can be scanned and acquired by the laser radar at a longer distance, so that the function of long-distance recharging guide is realized.
As can be seen from the principle of use of the refill guide system shown in fig. 1, when a plurality of guide lights are provided, the guide lights may also be provided on the surface of the refill socket body in a suitable arrangement.
For example, since the scanning plane of the lidar is fixed, the guidance laser signal will be difficult to detect when the guidance lamp is not in the same plane as its scanning plane. Therefore, in some embodiments, as shown in fig. 2, a plurality of guide lamps may be arranged in a vertical direction (fig. 2 takes three guide lamps as an example) to ensure that at least one guide lamp is located in the scanning plane of the laser radar, and the detection probability is increased to avoid positioning errors.
Of course, any adjustment, change or replacement of the structure of the guiding device for achieving the technical effect of expanding the range of the laser guiding signal emitted by the guiding lamp according to the actual needs of the person skilled in the art is within the protection scope of the present invention.
For example, the guide lamp may be arranged in plurality in a horizontal direction. Therefore, the laser radar can detect the guide laser signals of the guide lamps at the same time, and the guide effect of the guide lamps in the laser radar collecting data is improved by strengthening the characteristics of the guide lamps.
Preferably, the guiding laser signal emitted by the guiding lamp may also be scattered light. I.e. the guidance light emits infrared laser light at a plurality of angles to further increase the probability that the lidar detects the guidance laser signal.
In some embodiments, the guidance lights may also represent specific coded information by a specific signal combination. The backfill device in combination with the encoded information can provide more additional functionality to further improve guidance accuracy.
In particular, the pilot light may be encoded with the emission frequency of the pilot laser signal, which is periodically emitted outwards. The lidar may detect the change in the laser-guided signal to determine corresponding encoded information.
Preferably, to ensure that the coded information is accessible to the lidar, the transmitting frequency of the guidance light should be less than half the scanning frequency of the lidar.
For example, a digital signal of 0x55 may be given to control the pilot lamp to switch on and off at a frequency of 2 Hz. When the laser radar detects that the frequency of the guiding laser signal is 2Hz, the corresponding coded information can be determined to be 0x 55.
Fig. 3 is a block diagram of a control circuit according to an embodiment of the present invention. The control circuit can be applied to the recharging seat and the recharging device and is used for executing one or more logic operation steps to realize the function of automatic recharging in a matching way. As shown in fig. 3, the control circuit may include: a processor 131 and a memory 132.
The processor 131 and the memory 132 may be connected by a bus or other means, and fig. 3 illustrates an example of connection by a bus.
The memory 132, which is a non-volatile computer-readable storage medium, may be used to store non-volatile software programs, non-volatile computer-executable programs, and modules, and the processor 131 executes various functional applications and data processing by executing the non-volatile software programs, instructions, and modules stored in the memory 132.
The memory 132 may include a program storage area and a data storage area. The storage program area can store an operating system and an application program required by at least one function; the storage data area may store data and the like acquired by the water quality detection module 110. Further, the memory 132 may include high speed random access memory, and may also include non-volatile memory, such as at least one magnetic disk storage device, flash memory device, or other non-volatile solid state storage device.
Of course, the control circuit may also be integrated with a plurality of different input/output ports 133 (such as GPIO interfaces, UART serial interfaces, etc.) for connecting with corresponding functional modules, establishing a communication connection, thereby implementing data acquisition or control on the functional modules, and implementing other functions of the recharging stand or recharging device (e.g., controlling movement of the sweeping robot).
Fig. 4 is a flowchart of a method of a backfill guiding method according to an embodiment of the present invention. The steps of the recharging guiding method shown in fig. 4 can be executed by the control circuit shown in fig. 3, and the recharging guiding system shown in fig. 1 is cooperated to realize automatic recharging of the sweeping robot and other equipment.
As shown in fig. 4, the recharge guiding method includes:
410. and acquiring multi-frame laser signal detection data at a preset scanning frequency.
The laser signal detection data is acquired by a laser radar arranged on the recharging equipment. In the actual operation process, the laser radar works at a preset scanning frequency, and one frame of laser signal detection data can be obtained by each scanning. Thereby, a plurality of frames of continuous laser signal detection data are obtained over a period of time.
When the recharging device needs to carry out automatic recharging, the guiding device of the recharging seat is activated to emit a guiding laser signal outwards.
420. And judging whether the multi-frame laser signal detection data contains a guide laser signal or not. If yes, go to step 430, otherwise, go back to step 410 to continue the detection.
As shown in fig. 5, the pilot laser signal a forms a gaussian wave on the detection signal of the lidar with a higher signal-to-noise ratio than the laser signal B of the radar itself. The control circuitry of the backfill device may identify these high signal to noise ratio signals and combine one or more metrics to determine whether the pilot laser signal has been detected.
The principle of detecting and determining the guiding laser signal emitted by the guiding lamp is described in detail below with reference to the data frame shown in fig. 5 and the point cloud coordinate diagram shown in fig. 6.
Firstly, performing distance calculation on the laser signals with the signal-to-noise ratio higher than a preset threshold value in the multi-frame laser signal detection data to obtain corresponding point cloud data.
The guiding laser signal is directly emitted out by the guiding lamp, and compared with the laser signal actively emitted by the laser radar, the guiding laser signal is not subjected to the process of diffuse reflection. The signal-to-noise ratio can be significantly higher than other laser signals. The preset threshold may be a fixed value or a relative value, and only the laser signal with the signal-to-noise ratio significantly higher than that of other laser signals in the data needs to be detected.
Then, the distance change degree and the angle change degree of the point cloud data in the continuous multi-frame laser signal detection data are calculated.
As shown in fig. 5, the lidar has a certain viewing angle range, and can detect a laser signal within a certain angle range. Therefore, even if the laser radar is continuously rotated, the pilot laser signal appears in several consecutive frames of the detection data, thereby forming the data frame shown in fig. 4.
Meanwhile, the position of the guiding laser signal in the detection data also has a certain linear relation with the rotation direction of the laser radar. The pixels are arranged according to a certain rule at the pixel positions of the laser radar detection data frame.
Specifically, whether the laser signal is directed from left to right or right to left is related to the direction of rotation of the lidar, and the position interval between adjacent data frames is related to the scanning speed of the lidar.
As shown in the point cloud diagram of fig. 6, on one hand, the laser radar measures the distance (i.e., the position change of the laser signal between the adjacent data frames) according to the time interval between the laser emitted from the laser source and the received reflected laser. Therefore, when the distance calculation is performed on the guidance laser signal, the distance result obtained by the calculation actually depends on the scanning frequency of the laser radar and the moving speed of the guidance laser signal.
Considering that the moving speed of the guiding laser signal is very fast (light speed), the distance solution results over a period of time have significant differences (rapid change from large to small or small to large).
On the other hand, since the time corresponding to the multi-frame detection data is very short, the angular range of the radar rotation is small, and therefore the angular direction of the orientation in which the guidance lamp is located falls within a very small angular range (which is confirmed to be within 3 ° according to a lot of experiments).
And finally, determining that the guide laser signal exists by a control circuit when the distance change degree is obvious and the angle change degree is weak.
"significant" and "weak" are a set of relative concepts. It may specifically be represented using any suitable type of data statistics to indicate that distances vary over a large range, while angles fall within a small range of values.
As shown in fig. 6, after the guiding laser signal is converted into the corresponding settlement result (i.e., point cloud data), the distance variation and angle variation are very obvious between several adjacent data frames. One skilled in the art can determine whether the effect is significant or weak by any suitable determination method according to the needs of the actual situation. For example, it may be determined by setting a preset threshold (when the range of the distance change is larger than a preset threshold, it is determined that the distance change degree is significant).
430. And calculating the orientation of the recharging seat according to the guiding laser signal.
After the guiding laser signal is determined, the guiding laser signal is used as a guiding mark, and the direction of the recharging seat relative to the recharging device can be calculated and determined through a proper method, so that the recharging device is guided.
In one scanning period, the guiding laser signal detected by the laser radar can present the distribution characteristics of extremely small angle change range and extremely large distance change range, and is represented as a straight line-like shape on the point cloud chart shown in fig. 5.
In some embodiments, the angular variation range of the point cloud data corresponding to the guiding laser signal on the point cloud map may be first calculated. Then, the middle value of the angle change range is used as the direction of the recharging seat, and the distance between the recharging seat and the laser signal detection data is calculated according to the laser signal detection data in the detection range determined by taking the direction of the recharging seat as a reference.
Preferably, the distance between the refill seat and the refill seat can be calculated by using the data information in the detection range within +/-5 degrees of the direction of the refill seat.
440. And moving towards the recharging seat. After the control circuit is positioned to the position of the recharging seat, the recharging device can be controlled to be actively close to the recharging seat.
450. And in the moving process, updating the position coordinates of the recharging seat until the position coordinates are contacted with the charging contact of the recharging seat.
And continuously updating in the process of moving to the recharging seat, adjusting the positioning of the recharging seat, planning an adjusting route in real time until the adjusting route is finally contacted with the recharging seat, and charging.
In summary, the automatic recharge guiding system and the method thereof provided by the embodiments of the present invention use the scattered infrared light with the wavelength matched with the laser radar as the guiding laser signal.
On one hand, the light source energy is obviously higher than the reflected laser signal of the active light source of the laser radar after diffuse reflection, so that the laser radar can still accurately identify or screen out the guide laser signal from the data frame in the environment with a long distance (>8m), and the position of the recharging seat is detected and determined according to the guide laser signal.
On the other hand, the scattering infrared light enables the laser radar to detect at a plurality of angles, and the problems that the existing automatic recharging scheme is short in guiding distance, recharging points need to be marked again after the position of the recharging seat is changed and the like can be effectively solved.
In addition, the device such as the guide lamp that increases the transmission infrared light does not have special requirements to the appearance and the material of recharging equipment, can effectively simplify the design degree of difficulty and the processing technology of recharging seat to reduce the cost, have good popularization and application prospect.
It should be understood that the technical solutions and concepts of the present invention may be equally replaced or changed by those skilled in the art, and all such changes or substitutions should fall within the protection scope of the appended claims.