Robotic mower navigation system
AssigneeDeere & Company
InventorsColin E. Das, David A. Johnson
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A robotic mower navigation system has a plurality of landmark tags sequentially spaced along or inside a boundary wire. Each landmark tag has a unique identifier. The robotic mower has a detector for detecting the landmark tags, and a vehicle control unit having memory storing data for each of the landmark tags including the unique identifiers, a departure angle and a distance from the landmark tag to another non-sequential landmark tag. The vehicle control unit determines the shortest route to a specified destination based on the stored landmark tag data.
Claims14
A robotic mower navigation system, comprising:
- a plurality of landmark tags sequentially spaced along a boundary wire, each landmark tag having a unique identifier;
- a robotic mower having a detector for detecting the landmark tags;
- and
- a vehicle control unit on the robotic mower that directs the robotic mower to follow the boundary wire and determines a distance between the sequentially spaced landmark tags, and that directs the robotic mower to make a plurality of passes inside the boundary wire and determines a departure angle and a distance between each landmark tag and at least one non-sequentially spaced landmark tag, and determines a shortest route between the landmark tags to a specified destination.
A robotic mower navigation system, comprising:
- a vehicle control unit on a robotic mower that directs the robotic mower to follow a path between a plurality of adjacent landmark tags and determines a distance between each of the plurality of adjacent landmark tags located within or along a yard perimeter, each of the plurality of landmark tags being adjacent to two landmark tags and non-adjacent to a plurality of other landmark tags;
- the stored data including a unique identifier for each landmark tag, the vehicle control unit directing the robotic mower to make passes inside the yard perimeter and determine a distance from each landmark tag to at least one other non-adjacent landmark tag, and a departure angle from each landmark tag to at least one other non-adjacent landmark tag;
- the vehicle control unit determining a route between the landmark tags to a docking station based on the distances and departure angles.
A robotic mower navigation system, comprising:
- a boundary sensor on a robotic mower that senses an angle to a boundary wire;
- and
- a vehicle control unit on the robotic mower directing the robotic mower to make passes inside the boundary wire and that determines the angle and a distance between a landmark tag on the boundary wire and a plurality of other non-sequential landmark tags on the boundary wire, and directing the robotic mower on a path between selected non-sequential landmark tags.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.