Clothes Treatment Apparatus

The present disclosure relates to a clothing treatment apparatus. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a clothing treatment apparatus capable of determining whether clothes have fallen through an illuminance sensor.

In general, clothing treatment apparatuses conceptually include a washer that wets clothes in water to make it wet and then removes foreign substances through chemical action of detergent and physical action, such as drum rotation, and a dryer that dries the wet clothes using hot air and steam.

However, recently, a clothing care system that keeps dry clothes comfortable and clean without wetting thereof has appeared. This clothing care system may perform a refreshing cycle of removing odors from the clothes and drying or sterilizing the clothes by supplying steam or hot air to the clothes in a state in which the clothes are held.

This clothing care system may selectively add fragrance to the clothes, and has recently taken up an important role in clothing treatment apparatuses along with the washer and dryer.

illustrates a conventional clothing treatment apparatus provided with a steam supply.

Referring to Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 10-2020-0057545, a conventional clothing treatment apparatus includes a cabinetforming the appearance of the apparatus, and an inner caseprovided in the cabinetto accommodate clothes.

The clothing treatment apparatus may have a circulation ductprovided under the inner caseto circulate air of the inner case, a heat exchangerprovided in the circulation ductto exchange heat with the air, and a compressorconfigured to supply a high-temperature refrigerant to the heat exchanger. In addition, a hanger unit configured to hold clothes may be provided in the inner case. When the compressoris operated, hot air may be supplied to the inner caseto raise the temperature of the clothes, and the clothes may be dried or sterilized.

In addition, referring to Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 10-2020-0065886, a clothing treatment apparatus that measures the material of clothes, the load of the clothes, etc. inside an inner case using an optical sensor is provided.

The conventional clothing treatment apparatus had advantages of efficiently performing clothing management and reducing a time required for the management by determining control parameters applied to a blower or a steam generator based on the estimated load of clothes.

However, in the conventional clothing treatment apparatus, when clothes fall off of the hanger unit in the inner caseduring a clothing treatment process, a user may not recognize that the clothes have fallen off of a hanger during the clothing treatment process, and the clothes may be damaged if the fallen clothes block a steam or hot air injection hole.

Furthermore, since the user recognizes that the clothes have fallen and have not been properly treated after the clothing treatment process is over, there was a problem in that the user was not able to take active measures, resulting in low satisfaction with a clothing treatment apparatus product.

Accordingly, a clothing treatment apparatus that directly detects whether clothes have fallen by installing a load sensor on a hanger or the like has appeared. However, the load sensor may not properly detect whether clothes have fallen due to vibration occurring during the clothing treatment process and the light weight (1 kg or less) of the clothes.

Therefore, a need to provide a clothing treatment apparatus that may accurately determine whether clothes have fallen has arisen.

One technical task of the present disclosure is to provide a clothing treatment apparatus for detecting whether clothes have fallen during clothing treatment using an illuminance sensor.

Another technical task of the present disclosure is to provide a clothing treatment apparatus that may determine whether clothes have fallen from a change in the illuminance of light detected by a sensor unit when the clothes have fallen.

Another technical task of the present disclosure is to provide a clothing treatment apparatus that may determine whether clothes have fallen using an illuminance sensor that is less affected by shock and vibration and has no limit to the lifespan of a light source as long as power is supplied.

Another technical task of the present disclosure is to provide a clothing treatment apparatus that may indirectly and quickly determine whether clothes have fallen by detecting a change in the illuminance of light without direct contact of a sensor with the clothes.

Another technical task of the present disclosure is to provide a clothing treatment apparatus that may determine whether clothes have fallen by detecting a change in illuminance by a sensor unit as long as light emitted from a light emitting unit reaches the sensor unit regardless of where the light emitting unit and the sensor unit are provided.

In order to solve the above technical tasks, the present disclosure provides a clothing treatment apparatus including a light emitting unit provided in one of an inner case, a door, and a machine compartment to emit light toward the inside of the inner case, and a sensor unit provided in one of the inner case, the door, and the machine compartment to detect that clothes having fallen off of a hanger unit block at least a portion of the light emitted from the light emitting unit, wherein the light emitting unit and the sensor unit are disposed below the hanger unit.

The light emitting unit and the sensor unit may be disposed closer to the bottom surface of the inner case than the hanger unit.

The light emitting unit and sensor unit may be disposed in a width direction or forward and rearward directions with respect to the bottom surface of the inner case.

The sensor unit may be disposed on a rear surface of the inner case, and the light emitting unit may be disposed in front of the sensor unit.

The sensor unit may be disposed on one side surface of the inner case, and the light emitting unit may be disposed on one side surface of the sensor unit.

At least one of the light emitting unit or the sensor unit may be disposed in the machine compartment.

One of the light emitting unit and the sensor unit may be disposed in the machine compartment, and a remaining one of the light emitting unit and the sensor unit may be disposed in the inner case or the door.

The machine compartment may further include an inflow body configured to communicate with the bottom surface of the inner case to allow air to be introduced thereinto, a circulation duct provided with a heat exchanger configured to heat the air introduced from the inflow body to generate the hot air, and a discharge duct configured to allow the circulation duct to communicate with the inside of the inner case and disposed farther rearward than the inflow body, the light emitting unit may be provided on the inflow body, and the sensor unit may be provided on a rear surface of the inner case.

The sensor unit may be provided at a center of the rear surface of the inner case in the width direction, the inflow body may be disposed at one side on the bottom surface of the inner case, and the light emitting unit may be disposed at a position corresponding to the sensor unit in the inflow body.

The clothing treatment apparatus may further include a reflection unit disposed above the light emitting unit and provided to guide the light emitted from the light emitting unit to the sensor unit.

The machine compartment may further include a body filter mounted on the inflow body, and a filter cover disposed above the body filter, and the reflection unit may be disposed between the filter cover and the body filter.

The reflection unit may include side reflectors disposed on both sides of the filter cover.

The reflection unit may include a central reflector provided at a center of the filter cover in the width direction so as to face the light emitting unit, and the light emitting unit, the sensor unit, and the central reflector may be disposed in a straight line so that the central reflector guides the light to the sensor unit.

The light emitting unit and the sensor unit may be disposed above the bottom surface of the inner case.

The light emitting unit and the sensor unit may be provided to face each other.

The light emitting unit may be provided on one of side surfaces of the inner case, and the sensor unit may be provided on the other side surface of the inner case facing the one side surface.

The light emitting unit may be provided at a center of the one side surface in the width direction, and the sensor unit may be provided at a center of the other side surface in the width direction.

The light emitting unit may be provided on an inner surface of the door, and the sensor unit may be provided on a rear surface of the inner case.

The light emitting unit may be provided at a center of the rear surface of the inner case in the width direction, and the sensor unit may be provided at a center of the inner surface of the door in the width direction.

The present disclosure provides a clothing treatment apparatus including a controller provided to determine whether clothes have fallen depending on an amount of light emitted from a light emitting unit, detected by a sensor unit, wherein the sensor unit is disposed closer to the bottom surface of the inner case than a hanger unit, the sensor unit detects a first value when the clothes do not fall, and the controller determines that the clothes have fallen when the sensor unit detects a value smaller than the first value.

The clothing treatment apparatus may further include reflection units provided to disperse the light emitted from the light emitting unit in at least two directions so that the sensor unit detects that the clothes having fallen to the bottom surface block the light emitted from the light emitting unit.

The reflection units may be disposed on both sides of the sensor unit and the light emitting unit between the sensor unit and the light emitting unit.

The reflection units may be disposed closer to the light emitting unit than the sensor unit.

The sensor unit and the light emitting unit may be disposed in forward and rearward directions with respect to the bottom surface, and the reflection units may be disposed in a width direction with respect to the bottom surface.

The plurality of reflection units may be disposed symmetrically with respect to the sensor unit.

The plurality of reflection units may be disposed symmetrically with respect to the sensor unit and the light emitting unit.

The present disclosure provides a clothing treatment apparatus including a cabinet having an opening formed in a front portion thereof, an inner case provided in the cabinet to provide a space configured to accommodate clothes, a door coupled to the cabinet to open and close the opening, a hanger unit including at least one hanger configured to hold the clothes, a power transmission unit installed in the upper portion of the inner case and provided to shake the at least one hanger, and a driver connected to the power transmission unit to provide power to shake the at least one hanger, a machine compartment provided below a bottom surface of the inner case to supply at least one of hot air or steam into an inside of the inner case, a light emitting unit provided in one of the inner case, the door, and the machine compartment to emit light toward the inside of the inner case, and a sensor unit provided in one of the inner case, the door, and the machine compartment to detect that the clothes having fallen off of the hanger unit block at least a portion of the light emitted from the light emitting unit when the hanger unit, wherein the light emitting unit and the sensor unit are disposed below the hanger unit.

The present disclosure has the effect of accurately detecting whether clothes have fallen using an illuminance sensor.

The present disclosure has the effect of determining whether clothes have fallen using an illuminance sensor that is less affected by shock and vibration and has no limit to the lifespan of a light source as long as power is supplied.

The present disclosure has the effect of indirectly and quickly determining whether clothes have fallen by detecting a change in the illuminance of light without direct contact of a sensor with a filter.

The present disclosure has the effect of determining whether clothes have fallen by detecting a change in illuminance by a sensor unit as long as light emitted from a light emitting unit reaches the sensor unit regardless of where the light emitting unit and the sensor unit are provided.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the disclosure will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the present disclosure, the same or similar components are indicated by the same or similar reference numbers even in different embodiments, and the description thereof is replaced with the first description. In the following description of the present disclosure, singular expressions encompass plural expressions unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. In addition, in describing the embodiments of the present disclosure, if it is determined that the detailed descriptions of related known technologies may obscure the gist of the embodiments of the present disclosure, the detailed descriptions will be omitted. Further, it should be understood that the accompanying drawings are provided only for ease of understanding the embodiments of the present disclosure, and the technical idea of the present disclosure is not limited by the accompanying drawings.