Cleaning Module and Cleaning Appartus

The present disclosure claims priority to Chinese Patent Application No. 202211734557.9, filed on Dec. 30, 2022, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

The present disclosure relates to the technical field of cleaning devices, and in particular to a cleaning module and a cleaning device.

With the continuous development of science and technology, automatic cleaning devices, such as a sweeping robot and a sweeping and mopping all-in-one machine, have been used by a wide range of families. In order to enable a sweeping function for a cleaning robot, an automatic cleaning device is provided with paired rolling brushes that roll to gather garbage of varying sizes from a surface to be cleaned, and the garbage can be sucked and transferred into a garbage collection box through an air intake channel.

However, the existing automatic cleaning device is not always effective in transferring the garbage into the garbage collection box, and the efficiency in cleaning the garbage needs to be further improved.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure provide a cleaning module, including:

In some embodiments, projections of the first brushes and the second brushes onto a horizontal plane are at least partially overlapping when the first rolling brush and the second rolling brush rotate.

In some embodiments, the distance between each first brush and each second brush is less than half of the distance between the adjacent first brushes or the adjacent second brushes when projections of the first brushes and the second brushes onto a horizontal plane are at least partially overlapping.

In some embodiments, the first brushes and the second brushes are able to be in mirror symmetrical distribution in radial sections of the first rolling brush and the second rolling brush before the first rolling brush and the second rolling brush are assembled on the cleaning module.

In some embodiments, the cleaning module further includes:

In some embodiments, the first brushes are first long brushes, the first rolling brush further includes at least one first short brush, and the first short brush is not in contact with the second rolling brush; and/or

In some embodiments, each of the first short brushes is arranged between the two adjacent first long brushes, and/or, each of the second short brushes is arranged between the two adjacent second long brushes.

In some embodiments, the first brushes are first long brushes, the first rolling brush further includes at least one first short brush, and an outer contour formed by a trajectory of an outer end of the first short brush when the first rolling brush rotates does not interfere with an outer contour formed by a trajectory of outer ends of the second brushes when the second rolling brush rotates; and/or

In some embodiments, the first rolling brush and the second rolling brush are arranged one behind the other side by side in a direction of movement of the cleaning module.

In some embodiments,

In some embodiments, the thickness of each first long brush is less than or equal to that of each first short brush; and/or

In some embodiments, the first rolling brush includes a first support, the first support being provided with a supporting surface that supports the first brush member in a contact manner, and at least a part of the supporting surface being incompressible; and/or,

In some embodiments, a supporting surface of the first rolling brush is totally incompressible; and/or a supporting surface of the second rolling brush is totally incompressible.

In some embodiments, the first long brushes and the second short brushes are arranged opposite to each other when the first rolling brush rotates; and/or

In some embodiments, the first brushes and the second brushes are staggered.

In some embodiments, the first long brushes and the second short brushes are staggered, and/or the second long brushes and the first short brush are staggered.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, a cleaning device is further provided, including the cleaning module as described in any one of the above embodiments.

Compared with the related art, the foregoing solutions of the embodiments of the present disclosure have at least the following beneficial effects.

During operation of the automatic cleaning device provided by the present disclosure, the outer contours of the first brushes and the second brushes interfere with each other, but the first brushes are not in contact with the second brushes, so that an air intake channel between the first rolling brush and the second rolling brush is kept unobstructed, and the same position on the ground can be cleaned twice successively, which improves the sweeping efficiency.

To make the objectives, technical solutions and advantages of the present disclosure clearer, the present disclosure will be further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. It is obvious that the described embodiments are only some, but not all of the embodiments of the present disclosure. All other embodiments obtained by those of ordinary skills in the art without creative efforts based on the embodiments in the present disclosure are within the protection scope of the present disclosure.

It should be noted that, the terms “including”, “containing”, or any other variants thereof are intended to cover the nonexclusive inclusion, such that a commodity or device including a series of elements includes not only those elements, but also other elements not listed explicitly or elements inherent to such a commodity or device. Without more limitations, the element defined by the phrase “including a . . . ” does not exclude the existence of other same elements in the commodity or device including the element.

In the related art, an automatic cleaning device, for example, a sweeping robot and the like, may be of a dual-rolling-brush model. For this dual-rolling-brush model, both of the two rolling brushes are usually soft brushes that deform easily. The rolling brush structure having the dual soft brushes allows a large degree of deformation, and thus ensures good passability of large-particle garbage. However, since the soft rolling brushes are complicated in process and high in cost, and may deform easily after long-term use, how to reasonably set the structure of the two rolling brushes has become an urgent technical problem.

An embodiment of the present disclosure provides an automatic cleaning device, including a mobile platform configured to move on an operating surface; and a cleaning module assembled on the mobile platform and configured to clean the operating surface. The cleaning module includes: a first rolling brush arranged in a first direction perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the mobile platform, the first rolling brush including a first brush member, a first shaft lever and a first filler, the first filler being configured to sleeve the first shaft lever so that the first filler is coaxial with the first shaft lever, and a second rolling brush assembled with the cleaning module in a direction parallel to the first rolling brush, the second rolling brush including a second brush member and a second shaft component. The first filler is an elastic member, the second shaft component is a rigid member, and the first filler has a first inner diameter and a first outer diameter, so that the first filler has a preset thickness.

According to the automatic cleaning device provided by the embodiment of the present disclosure, by providing the dual-rolling-brush structure having the first rolling brush and the second rolling brush, and setting the first filler in the first rolling brush as the elastic member and the second shaft component as the rigid member, the automatic cleaning device can effectively clean the ground based on the two soft and hard rolling brushes, so that the passability of garbage between the first rolling brush and the second rolling brush is improved, and the interfering amount between the two soft and hard rolling brushes and the ground is reasonably configured, thereby wholly improving the ground cleaning efficiency.

According to some embodiments of the present disclosure, one of the rolling brushes is set as a hard brush, which is merely composed of an internal hard core and external rubber, so that the structure is simple, the dimensional accuracy is high, and the interfering amount between the rolling bush and the ground can be controlled easily during cleaning, so as to guarantee the cleaning effect and ensure that noise produced during cleaning is within an appropriate range. Moreover, the hard brush is free from sponge, is less deformed after long-term use, and thus is prolonged in service life. The combination of the soft brush and the hard brush can ensure sufficient passability of the large-particle garbage.

Optional embodiments of the present application will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

are schematic structural diagrams of an automatic cleaning device according to an exemplary embodiment. As shown in, the automatic cleaning device may be a vacuum ground sucking robot, or may be a ground mopping/brushing robot, or may be a window climbing robot, or the like. The automatic cleaning device may include a mobile platform, a perception system, a control system (not shown), a driving system, an energy system (not shown), a human-computer interaction systemand a cleaning module.

The mobile platformmay be configured to move automatically along a target direction on an operating surface. The operating surface may be a surface to be cleaned by the automatic cleaning device. In some embodiments, the automatic cleaning device may be a ground mopping robot, and thus the automatic cleaning device operates on a ground, and the ground is the operating surface. The automatic cleaning device may also be a window cleaning robot, and thus the automatic cleaning device operates on an outer surface of glass of a building, and the glass is the operating surface. The automatic cleaning device may also be a pipe cleaning robot, and thus the automatic cleaning device operates on an inner surface of a pipe, and the inner surface of the pipe is the operating surface. For the purpose of presentation only, the following description in the present application takes a ground mopping robot as an example for illustration.

In some embodiments, the mobile platformmay be an autonomous mobile platform, or a non-autonomous mobile platform. The autonomous mobile platform refers to that the mobile platformitself can automatically and adaptively make an operational decision based on an unexpected environmental input; and the non-autonomous mobile platform itself cannot adaptively make an operational decision based on an unexpected environmental input, but can execute a given procedure or operate according to an logic. Correspondingly, when the mobile platformis the autonomous mobile platform, the target direction may be determined autonomously by the automatic cleaning device; and when the mobile platformis the non-autonomous mobile platform, the target direction may be set systematically or manually.

The perception systemincludes a position determining apparatus (not shown) located on the mobile platform, a buffer (not shown) located in the forward portion of the mobile platform, cliff sensors (not shown) and sensing devices such as an ultrasonic sensor (not shown), an infrared sensor (not shown), a magnetometer (not shown), an accelerometer (not shown), a gyroscope (not shown) and an odometer (not shown) which are located at the bottom of the mobile platform, for providing various position information and motion state information of the robot to the control system.

For the ease of description, directions are defined as follows: the automatic cleaning device can be calibrated by the following three mutually perpendicular axes defined: a transversal axis Y, a longitudinal axis X and a vertical axis Z. A direction pointed by the arrow along the longitudinal axis X is designated as “rearward”, and a direction opposite to the direction of the arrow along the longitudinal axis X is designated as “forward”. The transversal axis Y is substantially a direction along the width of the automatic cleaning device, the direction of the arrow along the transversal axis Y is designated as “leftward”, and the direction opposite to the direction of the arrow along the transversal axis Y is designated as “rightward”. The vertical axis Z is a direction extending upwards from the bottom surface of the automatic cleaning device. As shown in, the direction along the longitudinal axis X is defined as a second direction, and the second direction is, for example, a forward direction or a rearward direction; and a direction perpendicular to the second direction within a horizontal plane is a first direction, and the first direction is, for example, a leftward direction or a rightward direction.

The control system (not shown) is disposed on a main circuit board in the mobile platform, and includes a computing processor such as a central processing unit and an application processor, that communicates with a non-transitory memory such as a hard disk, a flash memory and a random-access memory. The application processor is configured to receive environmental information sensed by the plurality of sensors and transmitted from the perception system, to draw a simultaneous map of an environment where the automatic cleaning device is located using a positioning algorithm e.g., simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), based on obstacle information fed back by the position determining apparatus, and to autonomously determine a travelling path based on the environmental information and the environmental map, and then to control the driving systemto perform operations, such as travelling forward, travelling backward, and/or steering based on the autonomously determined travelling path. Further, the control system may also determine whether to activate the cleaning moduleto perform a cleaning operation based on the environmental information and the environmental map.

The driving systemmay execute a driving command based on specific distance and angular information, such as x, y, and θ components, so as to manipulate the automatic cleaning device to travel across the ground. The driving systemincludes a driving wheel assembly, and the driving systemmay control a left wheel and a right wheel simultaneously. In order to control the motion of the automatic cleaning device more precisely, the driving systempreferably includes a left driving wheel assembly and a right driving wheel assembly. The left driving wheel assembly and the right driving wheel assembly are arranged symmetrically along a transversal axis defined by the mobile platform. In order to enable the automatic cleaning device to move on the ground more stably or have a stronger movement ability, the automatic cleaning device may include one or more steering assemblies. The steering assembly may be a driven wheel or a driving wheel, and structurally includes but is not limited to a universal wheel. The steering assembly may be located in front of the driving wheel assembly.

The energy system (not shown) includes a rechargeable battery, such as a nickel-hydride battery and a lithium battery. The rechargeable battery may be connected to a charging control circuit, a battery pack charging temperature detecting circuit and a battery undervoltage monitoring circuit, wherein the charging control circuit, the battery pack charging temperature detecting circuit and the battery undervoltage monitoring circuit are then connected to a single-chip microcomputer control circuit. A host of the automatic cleaning device is connected to a charging pile for charging through a charging electrode disposed on a side of or below a body of the automatic cleaning device for charging.

The human-computer interaction systemincludes buttons that are on a panel of the host and used by a user to select functions. The human-computer interaction system may further include a display screen and/or an indicator light and/or a horn that present/presents a current state or function item of the automatic cleaning device to the user. The human-computer interaction system may further include a mobile phone client program. For a route-navigation-type cleaning device, a mobile phone client may present a map of the environment where the device is located and the position of the device to the user, which may provide richer and more user-friendly function items to the user.

As shown in, the cleaning moduleincludes a dust box, a blower, and a main brush module. The main brush module sweeps garbage on the floor to the front of a dust suction inlet between the main brush module and the dust box, and then the garbage is sucked into the dust box by air having a suction force, which is generated by the blower and passes through the dust box. A dust removal capacity of the sweeper may be characterized by the dust pickup (DPU) efficiency of the garbage. The DPU is affected by a utilization rate of air in an air channel formed by the dust suction inlet, the dust box, the blower, the air outlet and connecting components between the four, and by a type and power of the blower, which is a complex systematic design problem. Compared to an ordinary plug-in vacuum cleaner, the improvement of the dust removal capacity is more meaningful for an automatic cleaning device with limited energy because the improvement of the dust removal capacity directly and effectively reduces requirements for energy, that is, the cleaning device that originally may cleansquare meters of the ground with a single charge may be evolved to cleansquare meters or more with the single charge. Furthermore, the service life of the battery with the reduced number of charging times will also be greatly increased, so that the frequency of replacing the battery by the user will also be decreased. More intuitively and importantly, the improvement of the dust removal capacity is the most obvious and important user experience, as the user will directly conclude whether the thorough cleaning is achieved.

is a schematic bottom view of the automatic cleaning device in. As shown in, the automatic cleaning device includes a mobile platform, the mobile platformis configured to move freely on an operating surface, and a cleaning moduleis arranged at the bottom of the mobile platform, and the cleaning moduleis configured to clean the operating surface. The cleaning moduleincludes a driving unit, a rolling brush frameand rolling brushesassembled in the rolling brush frame. The driving unitprovides a forward or reverse driving force, which is applied to the rolling brushesby means of a multi-stage gear set, and the rolling brushesrotates under the driving force to clean the operating surface, or the rolling brushesrotates under the driving force to collect dust.

As shown in, the rolling brush frameis provided with a front cleaning brush mounting siteand a rear cleaning brush mounting sitefor accommodating a cleaning rolling brush. The front cleaning brush mounting sitehas a first endand a second endopposite to the first end. One end of a first rolling brushis fixed at the first endin a snap-fit manner, and the other end of the first rolling brushis fixed at the second endin a snap-fit manner. In some embodiments, the front cleaning brush mounting siteis a strip-shaped groove structure in the mobile platform, and the strip-shaped groove structure extends in the first direction. The rear cleaning brush mounting sitehas a third endand a fourth endopposite to the third end. In some embodiments, the rear cleaning brush mounting siteis of substantially the same structure as the front cleaning brush mounting site, for example, a strip-shaped groove structure in the mobile platform, the strip-shaped groove structure extends in the first direction, and the second rolling brush may be mounted in a strip-shaped groove of the rear cleaning brush mounting sitethrough the opening of the strip-shaped groove structure. The two strip-shaped groove structures are parallel to each other in a second direction. The strip-shaped groove structures are not limited in shape or size as long as at least a part of the first rolling brush and at least a part of the second rolling brush can be accommodated. The first end of the front cleaning brush mounting siteand the third end of the rear cleaning brush mounting siteare located at one side of the front and rear X, and the second end of the front cleaning brush mounting siteand the fourth end of the rear cleaning brush mounting siteare located at the other side of the longitudinal axis X.

It should be noted that in the following embodiments of the present disclosure, the strip-shaped groove structure on the automatic cleaning device close to a steering wheel is taken as the front cleaning brush mounting site, and the strip-shaped groove structure away from the steering wheel is taken as the rear cleaning brush mounting site, which is taken as an example for detailed explanation, and of course, vice versa.

As shown in, in some embodiments, the automatic cleaning device includes two cleaning rolling brushes, one of which is arranged at the front cleaning brush mounting siteand regarded as a “front rolling brush”, and the other of which is arranged at the rear cleaning brush mounting siteand regarded as a “rear rolling brush”. The front rolling brush may be mounted in the front cleaning brush mounting sitethrough the opening of the strip-shaped groove structure, and the rear rolling brush may be mounted in the rear cleaning brush mounting sitethrough the opening of the strip-shaped groove structure.

is a combined structure of a cleaning module according to some embodiments of the present disclosure, andis a cross-sectional structure of the cleaning module according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown in, the rolling brushesassembled in the rolling brush frameincludes: a first rolling brusharranged in the first direction perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the mobile platform, the first rolling brushincluding a first brush member, a first shaft leverand a first filler, the first fillerbeing configured to sleeve the first shaft leverso that the first filleris coaxial with the first shaft lever; and a second rolling brusharranged in a direction parallel to the first rolling brush. In some embodiments, the first rolling brushand/or the second rolling brushmay also be assembled in other directions, for example, in the second direction that is not parallel to the longitudinal axis. Obviously, the second direction forms an angle with each of the first direction and the longitudinal axis. The second rolling brushincludes a second brush member and a second shaft component, the second shaft componentbeing coaxial with the second brush member. The first filleris elastic member, the second shaft componentis a rigid member, and the first filler has a first inner diameter and a first outer diameter, so that the first filler has a preset thickness. The assembled first filler is usually of a hollow cylindrical structure with a preset thickness, and the assembled first filler has a first inner diameter and a first outer diameter. However, in some embodiments, the first filler does not need to be in the shape of a continuous cylinder, but may be in a shape remaining after any cut is made on the cylinder, for example, the first filler may be a discontinuous cylinder, or one or more parts independent of each other, but they share the common feature that they all have the same thickness after assembly and that an inner surface and an outer surface of this thickness respectively have the diameters of the cylinders where they are located, i.e., the first inner diameter and the first outer diameter of the first filler. The first rolling brushand the second rolling brushrotate in opposite directions with respect to each other, so as to roll to gather the garbage from the operating surface when performing a cleaning task or spit out the garbage from the dust box when performing a dust collection task. It should be noted that, for this embodiment, the first rolling brushmay be the “front rolling brush” as previously described, or the “rear rolling brush” as previously described, and the second rolling brushmay likewise be the “front rolling brush” as previously described, or the “rear rolling brush” as previously described, which is not limited herein.

Specifically,is a cross-sectional diagram of the first rolling brush in the second direction according to some embodiments of the present disclosure, andis a cross-sectional diagram of the first rolling brush in the first direction according to some embodiments of the present disclosure, as shown in.

The first rolling brushincludes a first shaft lever. At least one end of the first shaft leveris connected to the multi-stage gear set to receive a driving force from the driving unitand to realize forward rotation or reverse rotation. The first shaft leveris in the shape of a strip-shaped cylinder, a strip-shaped square cylinder or a strip-shaped polygon prism, which is not limited herein. The following description will be made by taking the strip-shaped cylinder as an example. The axis of the first shaft levermay be regarded as a rotation axis of the first rolling brush. After the first rolling brushis mounted on the mobile platform, the driving systemmay drive the first shaft leverto rotate, so as to drive the first brush memberon the surface of the first shaft leverto perform cleaning.

The first rolling brushfurther includes a first filler. The first filleris configured to sleeve the first shaft leverso that the first filleris coaxial with the first shaft lever. As shown in, the first fillerhas a cross section of an annular structure, of which the inner ring matches the cross section of the first shaft leverin shape, and the inner ring may be circular, square, polygonal, etc., which is not limited herein. The following description is made by taking the circular inner ring as an example. The outer ring is generally circular. When the cross section of the first fillertakes the shape of a circular ring, the cross section of the first fillerhas an inner diameter and an outer diameter, the inner diameter is approximately equal to the diameter of the first shaft leverto realize a seamless sleeve joint between the first fillerand the first shaft lever, and the outer diameter is approximately equal to the inner diameter of a first cylindrical memberto realize a seamless sleeve joint between the first fillerand the first cylindrical member. The first filleris made of a compressible elastic material, and the first fillerhas the characteristics of being compressed inwards by a force, and restoring to the original state after the force is removed, such as sponge, an organic flexible material, resin and foam, which is not enumerated herein. In addition, the first fillermay also be a hollowed-out material or structure having the same compressible characteristic, such as a spring or an elastic piece, which is not enumerated herein, either.

The first rolling brushfurther includes a first brush member, the first brush membersleeving an outer side of the first filler. The first brush memberincludes a first cylindrical member, the first cylindrical memberis configured to sleeve the outer side of the first fillerso that the first cylindrical memberis coaxial with the first shaft lever. The first cylindrical memberis generally cylindrical and has substantially the same length as the first shaft lever. The first cylindrical memberis generally compressible, for example, made of elastic plastic or rubber, thus may be compressed inwards and deformed under the action of an external force, and may restore its original state after the external force is removed. The first cylindrical memberusually has a thickness to enhance the overall wear resistance of the first brush member. Besides, the first brush memberfurther includes first brushes. The first brushesmay be of a plurality of sheet-like structures, and extend from the outer surface of the first cylindrical memberin a direction away from the first cylindrical member. At least one first brushextends in the axial direction of the first cylindrical memberfrom one end of the first cylindrical memberto the other end of the first cylindrical member. The first brushmay be in other forms, such as a blade or a bristle.

In some embodiments, there are a plurality of first brushes. Each first brushis of a spiral structure on the outer surface of the first cylindrical member. The plurality of first brushesare approximately uniformly distributed in the circumferential direction of the first cylindrical member. The spiral structures of the plurality of first brushesare approximately parallel. By designing the first brushas the spiral structure, the garbage may be easily gathered in a rolling manner when the front rolling brush and the rear rolling brush rotate in opposite directions without generating an excessive impact force to damage the first brush, so that the service life thereof is prolonged.