Patent Application
20220304540
This application is based upon and claims priority to Chinese Patent Application CN 202110307875.6, filed Mar. 23, 2021, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The present disclosure relates to smart home devices, and more particular to a cleaning base station and a cleaning robot system.
With the continuous improvement of living standards and the acceleration of the pace of life, smart home products have emerged to bring convenience to people's lives and the cleaning robots have gradually entered millions of households.
The cleaning robot can automatically and intelligently mop and clean the indoor floor as long as its working program is set. Moreover, in traditional technology, after the cleaning robot completes mopping, the cleaning robot autonomously and intelligently enters the cleaning base station to clean the mopping member, so that the cleaning robot can perform mopping and cleaning work cyclically.
The cleaning base station in traditional technology is provided with a cleaning mechanism to clean the mopping member of the cleaning robot. However, In the traditional base station solutions, the cleaning solutions for the mopping member are water cleaning and physical spin-drying (or scraping), in which the mopping member cannot be completely dried, causing the interior of the cleaning base station and the mopping member to remain in a damp state for a long time, which is easy to breed bacteria and mosquitoes and affect the home living environment.
There are provided a cleaning base station and a cleaning robot system according to embodiments of the present disclosure. The technical solution is as below:
According to a first aspect of embodiments of the present disclosure, there is provided a cleaning base station, comprising:
According to a second aspect of embodiments of the present disclosure, there is provided a cleaning robot system, comprising:
a cleaning robot; and
a cleaning base station comprising:
In order to explain the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present disclosure more clearly, the drawings that need to be used in the description of the embodiments or the prior art will be briefly introduced below. Obviously, the drawings in the following description are only of the present disclosure. For some embodiments, those of ordinary skill in the art can obtain other drawings based on these drawings without creative labor.
The embodiments of the present disclosure are described in detail below. Examples of the embodiments are shown in the accompanying drawings, in which the same or similar reference numerals indicate the same or similar elements or elements with the same or similar functions. The embodiments described below with reference to the accompanying drawings are exemplary, which are intended to explain the present disclosure, but should not be understood as a limitation of the present disclosure.
In the description of the present disclosure, it should be understood that the terms indicating orientation or positional relationship such as “length”, “width”, “up”, “down”, “front”, “rear”, “left”, “right”, “vertical”, “horizontal”, “top”, “bottom”, “inner”, “outer” and the like are based on the orientation or positional relationship shown in the drawings, which are only for the convenience of describing the present disclosure and simplifying the description, instead of indicating or implying that the indicated device or element must have a particular orientation, be constructed and operated in a particular orientation, and therefore should not be understood as a limitation of the present disclosure.
In addition, the terms such as “first”, “second” and the like are only used for descriptive purposes, and cannot be understood as indicating or implying relative importance or implicitly indicating the number of indicated technical features. Thus, the features defined with “first”, “second” and the like may explicitly or implicitly include one or more of these features. In the description of the present disclosure, “plurality” means two or more, unless otherwise specifically defined.
In the present disclosure, unless otherwise clearly specified and limited, the terms such as “arrange”, “link”, “connect”, “fixed” and the like should be understood in a broad sense, for example, it may be a fixed connection, a detachable connection, or an integrated connection. It may be a mechanical connection or an electrical connection. It may be a direct connection or an indirect connection through an intermediate medium. It may be the communication inside two elements or the interaction relationship between two elements. For those of ordinary skill in the art, the specific meaning of the above-mentioned terms in the present disclosure can be understood according to specific circumstances.
As shown in
Specifically, the cleaning base station 10 includes a base 11 and an air supply device 20, which form a drying subsystem of the cleaning base station 10 for drying the mopping member 101. In this circumstance, the cleaning base station 10 directly blows an airflow to the mopping member 101 for drying. The base 11 is provided with a docking position for docking the cleaning robot 100 and an accommodating space 111 corresponding to the mopping member 101 of the cleaning robot 100. The base 11 is provided with a working groove, and the accommodating space 111 is an upper space corresponding to the working groove, that is, the mopping member 101 of the cleaning robot 100 is located in the accommodating space 111 above the working groove when the cleaning robot 100 is docked at the docking position. The base 11 is provided with a mounting space 112 for assembling other components, for example, the air supply device 20, that is, the air supply device 20 is arranged on the base 11. The mounting space 112 is communicated with the outside, and the accommodating space 111 is communicated with the mounting space 112. The air supply device 20 is arranged in the mounting space 112. The air supply device 20 is configured to inhale the airflow from the outside. The output end of the air supply device 20 is connected to at least one air outlet 110. The at least one air outlet 110 is provided in the working groove, so that the airflow is sent into the working groove from at least one direction, and is conveyed to the top opening of the working groove to blow toward the accommodating space, that is, the airflow blows toward the mopping member 101 to dry the mopping member 101, so that the mopping member 101 can be kept dry when the cleaning robot 100 is stored in the cleaning base station 10.
In this embodiment, the cleaning base station 10 further includes a heating device 30 arranged in the mounting space 112 of the base 11, and located in the airflow channel 113 between the output end of the air supply device 20 and the air outlet 110. When the cleaning robot 100 is used to clean the floor indoors, the cleaning robot 100 cyclically cleans the floor until the floor is cleaned completely. Then, the cleaning robot 100 enters the cleaning base station 10, and the mopping member 101 is located in the accommodating space 111. And then the air supply device 20 works to inhale air from the outside to generate airflow. The airflow is firstly blown through the heating device 30, so that the airflow is heated. The airflow continues to be blown to the air outlet 110 through the airflow channel 113 and enters the working groove, and finally the airflow is blown toward the mopping member 101 to heat and dry the mopping member 101 until the mopping member 101 is dried completely. When the hot airflow is blown to the mopping member 101 for drying, the hot airflow also dries other wet areas inside the cleaning base station 10 at the same time. In this way, both the mopping member 101 and other wet areas inside the cleaning base station 10 are finally dried completely by the hot airflow, avoiding providing environmental conditions for breeding bacteria and mosquitoes in the cleaning base station, thereby reducing the breeding of bacteria and mosquitoes, and improving the home living environment.
Specifically, in this embodiment, the air outlet 110 is circumferentially arranged around the working groove. More specifically, when the air outlets are more than one, the air outlets 110 are a plurality of through holes opened on the circumferential side wall of the working groove, so that the airflow enters the working groove from the plurality of through holes on the circumferential side wall of the working groove, and then is blown toward the top opening of the working groove to dry the mopping member 101 in the accommodating space 111. In this circumstance, optionally, the working groove may be a cylindrical groove, a square cylindrical groove, a spherical groove, an ellipsoidal groove or the like.
Alternatively, in this embodiment, the air outlet 110 is configured to be an annular opening. In this circumstance, the working groove may be a cylindrical groove, a spherical groove, or an ellipsoidal groove. The air outlet 110 of the annular opening is similar to the air outlet of a bladeless fan, so that the airflow passes through the regular or irregular airflow channel 113 and finally exits from the annular opening and blows to the mopping member 101.
Alternatively, in this embodiment, the air outlet 110 is provided at the bottom of the working groove, so that the airflow directly blows upward to the mopping member 101 in the accommodating space 111 with the top opening after entering the working groove from the air outlet 110 at the bottom of the working groove.
Alternatively, in this embodiment, the air outlet 110 may be a combination of at least two of the above-mentioned methods.
As shown in
Alternatively, in this embodiment, the working groove is the cleaning groove 115, the accommodating space 111 is located above the cleaning groove 115. A uniform air space 114 is formed below the cleaning groove 115, and the uniform air space 114 becomes a part of the airflow channel 113. The at least one air outlet 110 provided on the cleaning groove 115 is communicated with the uniform air space 114. When the air outlets are more than one, the air outlets 110 are a plurality of through holes opened on the circumferential groove wall or/and the bottom wall of the cleaning groove 115, so that the airflow in the uniform air space 114 enters the working groove from the plurality of through holes at the same time and blows to the top opening of the working groove to dry the mopping member 101 located in the accommodating space 111. Alternatively, in this embodiment, when the air outlet is one, the air outlet 110 may be a gap opened between the cleaning groove 115 and the uniform air space 114, and the gap may be an annular gap. In this circumstance, the airflow passes through the gap and blows to the top opening of the working groove to dry the mopping member 101 in the accommodating space 111. The mopping member 101 is suspended on the cleaning groove 115 when the cleaning robot 100 is docked at the docking position. As shown in
Alternatively, in this embodiment, the working groove is a groove provided on the base 11. The groove may be formed by a detachable or non-detachable member, for example, it is formed by a detachable box, the inner space of which is the groove. The groove may also be formed by directly recessing inward on the base 11. The working groove may be configured to arrange a cleaning groove 115. Specifically, the cleaning base station 10 further includes a partition (not shown in the figures), which is provided in the working groove to divide the working groove into a cleaning groove 115 and a sewage collection cavity (the partition may be a groove-shaped member, and the groove space in the groove-shaped member is the cleaning groove 115). One or more the air outlets 110 are arranged on the partition to communicate the cleaning groove 115 with the sewage collection cavity, and the remaining air outlets 110 are arranged on the circumferential side wall of the cleaning groove 115. The sewage collection cavity is communicated with the airflow channel 113. In this way, the airflow inhaled by the air supply device 20 is heated by the heating device 30 and firstly enters the sewage collection cavity along the airflow channel 113 (of course, the airflow inhaled by the air supply device 20 can also enter the sewage collection cavity without being heated, that is, the airflow channel 113 is not provided with the heating device 30), and then the airflow enters the cleaning groove 115 from the sewage collection cavity, and finally blows to the mopping member 101 located in the accommodating space 111. In this circumstance, a support column may be provided where the water collection cavity 116 is located shown in
In the cleaning base station 10 of this embodiment, the cleaning base station 10 further includes a control module (not shown in the figures) arranged on the base 11. The control module is communicatively connected to the air supply device 20, the heating device 30, the spray mechanism 40, the driving device 50, and the control unit in the cleaning robot 100 (by a wired communication connection or by a wireless communication connection). The control module can control the air supply device 20, the heating device 30, the spray mechanism 40, the driving device 50 and the cleaning robot 100 to perform work by installed predetermined work programs. In addition, the cleaning base station 10 further includes a position sensing device (not shown in the figures. The position sensing device is communicatively connected to the control module (either by a wired communication connection or by a wireless communication connection) and the control unit in the cleaning robot 100. In this way, the position sensing device is configured to detect the relative position between the mopping member 101 of the cleaning robot 100 and the accommodating space 111 in real time, and transmits the relative position information to the control module. When the position sensing device detects that the mopping member 101 is already located in the accommodating space 111, the control module controls the spray mechanism 40 to clean the mopping member 101. The control module controls the spray mechanism 40 to stop the cleaning work after the spray mechanism 40 cleans the mopping member 101 for a period of time (the cleaning time can be set in the control module according to practice needs, and in the cleaning time the mopping member 101 can be cleaned by spraying). Then, the control module controls the driving device 50 to drive the scraping plate 60 to scrape the mopping member 101. The driving device 50 drives the scraping plate 60 to reciprocate several times, thereby squeezing the moisture in the mopping member 101 as much as possible. Then, the control module controls the air supply device 20 and the heating device 30 to operate to dry the mopping member 101 until the mopping member 101 is completely dried (the duration of the drying work can be set in the control module according to practice needs).
In addition, an air inlet assembly 70 is arranged at the air inlet position where the mounting space 112 is communicated with the outside, and the air inlet assembly 70 is configured to filter the intake air and block the bulky debris.
When the cleaning robot is used to clean the floor indoors, the cleaning robot cyclically cleans the floor until the floor is completely cleaned. Then, the cleaning robot enters the cleaning base station and stops, and the mopping member is located on the working groove of the cleaning base station. The air supply device works to inhale air from the outside to generate the airflow. The output end of the air supply device is communicated with at least one air outlet, and the airflow blows to the mopping member through the air outlet, thereby drying the mopping member until the mopping member is completely dried. When the airflow blows to the mopping member for drying, the airflow also dries the wet areas inside the cleaning base station. In this way, both the mopping member and the wet areas inside the cleaning base station are eventually and completely dried by the airflow, avoiding providing environmental conditions for breeding bacteria and mosquitoes in the cleaning base station, thereby reducing the breeding of bacteria and mosquitoes and improving the home living environment.
According to another aspect of the present disclosure, provided is a cleaning robot system. Specifically, the cleaning robot system includes a cleaning robot 100 and the aforementioned cleaning base station 10.
Described above are only the exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure, which are not intended to limit the present disclosure. Any modification, equivalent replacement and improvement made within the spirit and principle of the present disclosure shall be included within the protection scope of the present disclosure.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 202110307875.6 | Mar 2021 | CN | national |
