JPS6159507A - Guiding device of selfcontrol running truck - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To attain ease of change of a moving path of a running truck and to control the movement of the truck by providing an ITV camera, a picture processing circuit and a running control computer so as to apply any processing to a floor. CONSTITUTION:A video signal from an ITV camera 1 provided to an universal head 2 mounted on a running truck moving in a room is inputted to the processing circuit 4 via a picture interface 3. The circuit 4 applies binary processing via the computer 5 and the result is inputted to the running control computer 7. The computer 7 discriminates the length of side and a character or a figure in a mark, and applies comparison with a map and range operation in the inside of it, a deviation to an object location is inputted to drive conver sion circuits 8a, 8b and drive systems 9a, 9b are operated. That is, the movement of the running truck is controlled without applying any processing to the floor, the moving path of the running track is changed easily and the running truck is induced to the object place by the information obtained by the camera 1.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to a guidance device for an autonomous vehicle that is used as a driving instruction for an inspection/maintenance robot or the like.

[Technical background of the invention and its problems]

Currently, industrial robots are being developed in various fields.
They are required to move and perform inspection, monitoring, maintenance, and work according to their purpose. Transportation methods for these tasks include:
Broadly speaking, they can be divided into those that move on a mole rail and those that move on the floor.

However, if something moves on a mole rail, its movement route cannot be changed. Furthermore, even for devices that move on the floor, some kind of processing is required on the floor or the like, making it difficult to easily change the route.

Furthermore, the following two methods are generally used to guide conventional industrial robots. First, a guide wire is attached to the floor surface, a current of a certain frequency is passed through the guide wire, and pick-up coils are installed on the robot side at regular intervals so that the ratio of the voltage generated in the pick-up coils becomes zero. The vehicle is controlled to run on the attached line.

The second method is to control the steering by making it possible to obtain reflected light from a tape attached to the floor surface.

All of these methods involve processing the floor surface, which requires a long period of time, and requires 8 years to keep the floor surface clean at all times. For this reason, there is a need for a method of guiding vehicles other than by applying processing to the floor surface.

[Purpose of the invention]

An object of the present invention is to provide a guidance system for an autonomous vehicle that can control the movement of a traveling vehicle and easily change the traveling route of the traveling vehicle without performing any processing on the floor surface. It is about providing.

The gist of the present invention is to detect a target object from the outside world information obtained by an ITV camera, obtain the distance and direction from the results, perform a measurement with good accuracy, and use this measurement result to ensure the movement of the vehicle. The purpose is to convert it into a controlled quantity.

[Summary of the Invention] In other words, in order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a guiding device for a traveling vehicle that moves inside and outside of a nuclear reactor containment vessel for inspection and monitoring. A target object, such as a sign, is extracted using the ITV camera installed on the camera platform, and the angle is calculated from the ratio of the side lengths of the measured sign, and the distance is calculated from the absolute length of the side of the memorized sign and the measured sign. (I search for a running car from the memorized map)
The system calculates the position of the vehicle and converts the amount of deviation from the designated destination into a control distance for steering control.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the vehicle guidance device according to the present invention, the vehicle can be guided by itself using information from the outside world to control the movement of the vehicle, and it is only necessary to instruct the vehicle about the destination, making it very easy to operate. It can improve sex. In addition, there is no need for processing to guide the route to the floor, etc., and the route can be freely selected by converting the sign database.

[Embodiments of the invention]

Hereinafter, details of the present invention will be explained with reference to illustrated embodiments.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an embodiment of the present invention. A mirror image signal from an ITV camera 1 installed on a pan head 2 mounted on a vehicle moving indoors is divided into, for example, 512 x 512 pixels by an interface 3 that converts it into a digital image via a cable, and then sent to an image processing circuit 4. is input. The image processing circuit 4 is hardware having processing functions such as binarization processing, spatial filtering processing, and inter-pixel calculations, and operates under a total EHjl 15 that suspends processing control. Further, the calculator 5 has a magnetic disk or the like that stores the target object. Here, a method for extracting a target object, a method for measuring a distance, etc. will be described later.

The image processing result is input to the control calculation unit 7, which judges the length of the side and the letters or numbers appearing in (WLm).Then, it compares it with the map inside the calculation line. and perform distance calculations (details will be described later), input the deviation relative to the destination to the drive conversion circuits 8a and 8b,
It operates the drive systems 9a and 9b.

Next, the relationship between the traveling vehicle and the object will be explained. For example, assuming a maze as shown in FIG. 2, markers 111a to 11h are placed at each corner. The mobile robot 12 detects the sign 11a from the TV camera 13 installed on the pan head, determines the distance and angle, and controls the sign 11a to be within a certain deviation angle until it reaches the point (3). Then, the direction is changed at the point (■), rotated to a position where the object 11b faces directly, and the above-mentioned deviation angle is controlled to head toward the point (2).

In this way, the same control is performed one after another, and the final destination, point 2, is reached.

Next, the image processing method and control method will be explained in detail with reference to FIGS. 3 to 5. Assuming a room like the one shown in Figure 4, the target sign is 11a.

~, 11, and the traveling route is 18a, respectively.
~, 18, and the description will be made assuming that the robot is located at point 0. First, the image at point 0 is input as shown in Figure 3 (a), and to explain the case where you go to a place marked as "F" from among these, for example, from among the images obtained from point 0, The backgrounds 14a, 14c, and 14e of the sign are separated from the external background by color. For example, if the background of a sign is red, an image is created using the red light of the video signal, area division is performed, the degree of clustering of dots is determined, and the part of the sign is masked. Next, the distance is determined from the ratio of the length of the side 16b and the length of the memory marker as shown in FIG. 3(C). Here, the distance 16d is determined from the IR rate of the camera lens system and the length of the sides of one elephant, and 16a and 16b are determined by the ratio of the lengths. In this way, the distance between the robot and the target sign is determined, and then the robot goes to the location marked F'' and identifies the sign. For this identification, the length of each side was determined, so we performed coordinate transformation based on the length of the side from the image shown in 16, created 15 images as shown in Figure 3(b), and normalized the deviation. A correlation calculation is performed with the stored mark to determine the letter and number based on the one with the maximum correlation value, and the mark is identified. Next, the positional relationship between the sign and the robot determined in this way is determined. In the case shown in Figure 5, the actual length a of the object is projected as b as the length observed by the ITV camera. Ru. The positional relationship between the robot and the object, that is, θ is θ-cos
' (b/a).

In this way, the vehicle travels toward the target sign based on the angle and distance Bit. For example, when changing direction at distance d1, make a 90 + θ angle control at the 0 point, rotate the camera platform 90 degrees to face the object, and drive straight until it is in the center of the image obtained. can reach the point,
If you turn around 90 degrees at that point, you can reach your target by continuing straight ahead.

In this way, according to this embodiment, the vehicle can be guided by the information of the outside world obtained by the ITV camera, and the vehicle can be guided to the destination by simply instructing the vehicle to the destination. Can be done. Therefore, the operability is extremely good. Further, there are advantages such as the ability to freely select a route by converting the sign database without requiring any processing to guide the route to the floor or the like.

Note that the present invention is based on the above-mentioned actual hI! The invention is not limited to the examples, and can be implemented with various modifications without departing from the gist of the invention. For example, the image processing circuit, control calculation (14
The configuration is not limited to the same as shown in FIG. 1, but may be any type that can determine the position of the vehicle based on video information obtained by an ITV camera and control the drive system of the vehicle based on the position information. Bye. Further, the shape, number, arrangement position, etc. of the signs may be changed as appropriate depending on the desired travel route.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the position and relationship between a mobile robot and a sign, and FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing some examples of input images. Figure 4 is a diagram showing the relationship between the route and (= sense), and Figure 5 is a diagram to explain the method of guiding the vehicle to the target sign. 1... ITV camera, 2... Cloud 3... Image interface, 4... Image processing circuit, 5... Image processing computer, 6... Input keyboard, 7... Drive control failure, 8... Drive conversion Circuit, 9... Drive system, 10... Exploration temporary, 11a, ~, 11h... Marker,
12... Traveling vehicle, 13... ITV camera, 4. ~．
16... Input image, 18a, ~, 18h-path. 2nd eye 11d Fig. 3 (a) (b) CC) Fig. 4 b Fig. 5

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) In a guidance device for a traveling vehicle that moves in a traveling vehicle for inspection, monitoring, and work, a sign placed at a predetermined position to guide the traveling vehicle, and a platform mounted on the traveling vehicle. The vehicle is equipped with an ITV camera that is provided to photograph the sign, and a drive control unit that determines the position of the vehicle based on the video signal obtained by the camera and controls the drive system of the vehicle based on the position information. A guidance device for an autonomous vehicle characterized by: (2) The drive control unit includes an image processing circuit that processes the video signal from the camera, a storage circuit that stores the sign in advance, and a sign input for registering and changing the sign to be stored in the storage circuit. The detected sign is determined by comparing the image information obtained by the image processing circuit with the sign stored in the storage circuit, and the position of the traveling vehicle is determined by comparing the determined sign with the image information. and a drive conversion circuit that sends a drive signal to the drive system of the traveling vehicle based on the output of the arithmetic processing section. Guidance device for the autonomous vehicle described. (3) The arithmetic processing unit calculates the slope with respect to the detected sign from the ratio of the side lengths of the detected sign, and calculates the distance between the detected sign and the stored sign from the absolute length of the sides of the detected sign and the stored sign. 2. A guidance system for an autonomous vehicle according to claim 1, wherein the position of the vehicle is determined from a stored map.