Laundry treating appliance with load surface area detection
AssigneeWhirlpool Corporation
InventorsFarhad Ashrafzadeh, James P. Carow, Shreecharan Kanchanavally
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention relates to a laundry treating appliance and method for controlling the operation of the laundry treating appliance by determining the surface area of the laundry based on image data of the laundry.
Claims20
A method for controlling operation of a laundry treating appliance comprising a rotatable drum at least partially defining a treating chamber for receiving laundry for treatment in accordance with a treating cycle of operation, the method comprising:
- imaging the laundry to generate image data;
- determining a motion of the laundry from the image data;
- and
- automatically selecting at least one parameter for the treating cycle of operation based on the motion.
A laundry treating appliance, comprising:
- a rotatable treating chamber;
- an imaging device configured to generate image data representative of laundry in the rotatable treating chamber;
- and
- a controller operably coupled to the imaging device and configured to determine motion of laundry in the rotatable treating chamber from the image data and control a treating cycle of operation based on the motion.
A method for controlling operation of a laundry treating appliance comprising a rotatable drum partially defining a treating chamber containing laundry, the method comprising:
- imaging the laundry to generate image data;
- determining a surface area of the laundry in the treating chamber from the image data or a number of items in the treating chamber from the image data;
- and
- automatically selecting at least one parameter for a treating cycle of operation based on the determining.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.