VACUUM CLEANING ROBOT AND ITS CONTROL TECHNIQUE Russian patent published in 2009 - IPC A47L9/28 

FIELD: household goods and personal effects.

SUBSTANCE: vacuum cleaning robot is equipped with a bumper sensor of obstacle collision, a drive unit providing for the vacuum cleaning robot translocation in the working travel direction and a controller that actuates the drive unit to enable the vacuum cleaning robot translocation in the direction opposite to that of working travel when the bumper sensor detects an obstacle collision, performs real-time count of the vacuum cleaning robot's attempts at contrariwise motion repetition and compares the count result with the reference value preset. The controller de-actuates the drive unit when the count result exceeds the reference value preset. The controller is connected to the sound unit and the display unit actuating at least one of them when the count result exceeds the reference value preset. The vacuum cleaning robot control process includes the following operations: actuation of the vacuum cleaning robot drive unit for working travel direction motion across the surface being treated; actuation of the vacuum cleaning robot drive unit for a fixed-distance translocation in the direction opposite to that of working travel when the bumper sensor detects an obstacle collision; real-time count of the vacuum cleaning robot's attempts at the contrariwise (off the obstacle) motion repetition; comparison of the count result with the reference value preset and the drive unit de-actuation when the count result exceeds the reference value preset.

EFFECT: providing for efficient timely diagnosis and indication of the bumper sensor failure and outage.

11 cl, 3 dwg