Patent ID: 8903160

Claim:
An apparatus planning a traveling path of a mobile robot, the apparatus comprising: a pattern extracting unit to extract patterns from an image of a ceiling captured in a ceiling direction, wherein the extracted patterns correspond to structural or decorative features of the ceiling which are not artificial location marks having pre-stored location coordinates, and an extracted pattern is an extracted line, extracted circular object, and/or extracted quadrangle; a pattern direction extracting unit to extract a pattern direction of the extracted patterns in the image by grouping the extracted patterns according to a determined same direction, when the extracted patterns are extracted lines, and according to a determined repetition direction, when the extracted patterns are determined same extracted circular objects or determined same quadrangles, so as to determine the pattern direction to be the determined same direction of the extracted lines or the determined repetition direction of the circular objects or quadrangles; and a path generating unit to generate a traveling path of the mobile robot based on the extracted pattern direction.