Patent ID: 9086700
Filing Date: 2015-07-21
Classification: G05D,Y10S

Abstract:
1. An autonomous locomotion apparatus which autonomously determines a moving path and moves accordingly, comprising: an autonomous locomotion apparatus information acquisition unit that acquires a position and a speed of the autonomous locomotion apparatus; a human detection unit that detects a person around the autonomous locomotion apparatus to acquire a position, a speed, and a direction of travel of the person; a human movement attribute acquisition unit that acquires an attribute of person's movement based on mobility capability of the person which represents easiness of movement of the person for each of travel directions of the person detected by the human detection unit; a human path candidate creation unit that creates a plurality of candidate paths for having the person move along based on the position and the speed of the autonomous locomotion apparatus acquired by the autonomous locomotion apparatus information acquisition unit and the position, the speed, and the direction of travel of the person acquired by the human detection unit; a human path load evaluation unit that evaluates a movement load for each candidate path created by the human path candidate creation unit by using an evaluation formula based on information from the human path candidate creation unit and information from the human movement attribute acquisition unit, wherein the movement load represents a time taken for movement according to the person's easiness of movement for each direction of travel of the person, and the evaluation formula includes a load of a person's travel distance and a load of a person's direction change among the attributes based on the mobility capability of the person acquired by the human movement attribute acquisition unit; a human path determination unit that determines a path for having the person move along from among the candidate paths created by the human path candidate creation unit based on the movement load calculated by the human path load evaluation unit; a guide path planning unit that plans a path for the autonomous locomotion apparatus to guide the person to the path determined by the human path determination unit based on information from the autonomous locomotion apparatus information acquisition unit and information from the human path determination unit; and a locomotion control unit that controls the autonomous locomotion apparatus to travel along the guide path planned by the guide path planning unit based on the information from the autonomous locomotion apparatus information acquisition unit and information from the guide path planning unit.