Patent ID: 8515612
Filing Date: 2013-08-20
Classification: G05D

Abstract:
1. A route planning device for planning a travel route to be used by an autonomous mobile device, which travels along the travel route, before the autonomous mobile device travels autonomously, the device comprising: an environmental map acquisition unit arranged to acquire an environmental map showing an obstacle area in which an obstacle exists; a movable area extraction unit arranged to extract a movable area from the environmental map acquired by the environmental map acquisition unit and thinning the extracted movable area; a route planning unit arranged to plan a travel route from the thinned movable area extracted by the movable area extraction unit by searching for the shortest route to the destination; a linearization unit arranged to linearize the travel route planned by the route planning unit without interfering with the obstacle area; and a smoothing unit arranged to smooth the travel route linearized by the linearization unit without interfering with the obstacle area; wherein the smoothing unit extracts a point on the linearized travel route and two points on the linearized travel route sandwiching the point, connects the two points with a straight line, and, when the connected straight line does not interfere with the obstacle area, re-sets the straight line as a travel route which connects the two points; and the smoothing unit smoothes the travel route when an angle formed by the extracted three points is not greater than a certain value that is set forth according to mobility of the autonomous mobile device.