Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080243388 | Autonomous driving apparatus and executing program thereof - An autonomous driving apparatus includes: an obstacle detecting unit for detecting a presence of an obstacle or judging a distance to the obstacle; a driving unit for driving a main body; and a control unit for changing a moving direction of the main body by controlling the driving unit based on obstacle information from the obstacle detecting unit, wherein the control unit has a reciprocating mode in which the main body is reciprocatively moved within a moving area while being also moved in a direction normal to a reciprocating direction. If the control unit judges that the main body is in a movement-stuck state in which movement of the main body is stuck within a movement-stuck area by an obstacle placed in the moving area, the control unit switches the reciprocating mode to an obstacle avoiding mode in which the main body escapes from the movement-stuck area. | 10-02-2008 |
20100217451 | ENERGY USAGE CONTROL SYSTEM AND METHOD - The present invention provides a coordinating node in an energy usage control system. The coordinating node receives trade-off functions from energy consuming nodes. The coordinating node and the energy consuming nodes collectively form a domain. A trade-off function from an energy consuming node describes a relationship between a result of energy consumption by the energy consuming node and a degree of satisfaction towards the result. The coordinating node develops policies respectively for the energy consuming nodes, based on the received trade-off functions. The policies each contain at least one goal and/or at least one procedure to guide the respective energy consuming node to control its energy usage such that the energy consuming nodes collectively achieve an optimum energy saving for the domain. | 08-26-2010 |
20110270456 | POWER CONTROL SYSTEM AND METHOD AND PROGRAM FOR CONTROLLING POWER CONTROL SYSTEM - A power control device includes a priority setting section capable of setting a use priority of a home appliance connected wirelessly or via cable or an adapter connected to the home appliance. The home appliance or the adaptor connected to the home appliance operates within the usable power of a result of the inquiry to the power control device. When there is no excess in usable power over the required power in the inquiry, the power control device reduces the power of a device having a lower priority than the device which has transmitted the inquiry in order to use the device with the higher priority. | 11-03-2011 |
20120097045 | COOKING DEVICE, CONTROL METHOD AND PROGRAMME FOR SAME - A cooking device includes: first and second heating cooking units; a mode setting unit configured to set heating modes of the first and second heating cooking units; a receiving unit; a priority managing unit configured to store priorities which are given to the first heating cooking unit and the second heating cooking unit, respectively; and a power adjusting unit configured to adjust using power of a heating cooking unit to which a lower one of the priorities of the first heating cooking unit and the second heating cooking unit stored in the priority managing unit is given when the receiving unit receives a power adjustment request signal transmitted from a power controlling device. The priorities are different values for each heating mode. | 04-26-2012 |
20120112696 | POWER CONTROL SYSTEM, POWER CONTROL METHOD, POWER CONTROL DEVICE AND POWER CONTROL PROGRAM - Disclosed are a power control system, a power control method, a power control device and a power control program, which can efficiently supply power to an electric device and charge an electric vehicle. A power control device ( | 05-10-2012 |
20130060352 | ELECTRICAL DEVICE CONTROL SYSTEM, SERVER, ELECTRICAL DEVICE, AND ELECTRICAL DEVICE CONTROL METHOD - An input accepting unit accepts an input of desired time information showing a desired operation start time or a desired operation end time of a household electrical appliance, a sending unit sends, to a server, the desired time information, and electric power information showing an electric power required for the household electrical appliance to be operated, an electric power charge information acquiring unit acquires electric power charge information showing an electric power charge which changes per hour, an operation time computing unit computes an operation start time or an operation end time of the household electrical appliance based on the desired time information, the electric power information, and the electric power charge information, and an operation control unit starts the operation of the household electrical appliance according to the operation start time or the operation end time. | 03-07-2013 |
20130063253 | RFID DEVICE, HOST, RFID-EMBEDDED APPARATUS, AND METHOD OF CONTROLLING RFID DEVICE - A radio frequency identification (RFID) device includes: a contact interface for wired communication with a host; a contactless interface for contactless communication with a reader/writer; a command processing unit that obtains a command from the reader/writer in the contactless communication and process the command, the command instructing a data access; and a memory that holds data. The command processing unit determines a communication mode, and (i) executes the data access instructed in the command between the reader/writer and the memory, when the communication mode is determined as a first communication mode, and (ii) executes the data access instructed in the command between the reader/writer and the host, when the communication mode is determined as a second communication mode. | 03-14-2013 |
20130173440 | ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT CONTROL DEVICE, ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT CONTROL METHOD AND ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT - An equipment control device has: a reception unit for receiving desired time information indicating a desired operation start time or a desired operation termination time, operation period information and electrical power information; a time-shift period setting unit for setting a time-shift period indicating a period which has a time range including the desired time information and during which the operation start time or the operation termination time of a household appliance is shiftable; an electrical power charge information acquisition unit for acquiring electrical power charge information; an operation time computing unit for computing the operation start time or the operation termination time, on the basis of which the electricity charge that is billed when the household appliance is operated within the time-shift period falls to or below a predetermined charge; and a transmission unit for transmitting the operation start time or the operation termination time to the household appliance. | 07-04-2013 |
20130204445 | APPARATUS CONTROL DEVICE AND APPARATUS CONTROL METHOD - Provided are an apparatus control device and an apparatus control method that make it possible to improve convenience for the user. An apparatus control device includes: a time-shift time computation unit that computes a time-shift time indicating an operation start time or an operation end time at which an electricity cost billed when an electric apparatus is operated is equal to or less than a predetermined rate, a recomputation determination unit that determines whether or not to change the time-shift time computed by the time-shift time computation unit, and a notification unit that, when determination is made by the recomputation determination unit that the time-shift time is to be changed, notifies the user that the initially computed time-shift time is to be changed. | 08-08-2013 |
20130211560 | HOUSEHOLD ELECTRICAL APPLIANCE AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLING HOUSEHOLD ELECTRICAL APPLIANCE - A washer-dryer is provided with a time shift function for performing timer presetting processing on the basis of a time shift computation result which indicates an operation start time suitable for operation. The washer-dryer includes: an input operation unit for allowing a user to perform operations for operating the washer-dryer; a display unit for displaying information relating to the operation of the washer-dryer; and an operation control unit for controlling the operation of the washer-dryer on the basis of the time shift computation result. When a start button on the input operation unit is operated by the user, the operation control unit automatically performs the timer presetting processing on the basis of the time shift computation result and also displays a timer preset time at the display unit. | 08-15-2013 |
20140065971 | TERMINAL DEVICE, CONTROL DEVICE, FAULT DIAGNOSIS SYSTEM, AND FAULT DIAGNOSIS METHOD - A state updating unit updates first information stored in a storage unit whenever the state of a control unit transitions from an idle state to an active state or from the active state to the idle state. A second power supply unit induces electric power from radio waves received by the antenna unit. An information acquiring unit operates after receiving the supply of electric power from the second power supply unit, acquires second information indicating whether electric power is supplied from the first power supply unit, acquires the first information from the storage unit, and transmits the acquired first and second information to the control device. A diagnosing unit diagnoses faults in the terminal device based on the first and second information transmitted from the information acquiring unit of the terminal device. | 03-06-2014 |
20140207256 | ELECTRIC DEVICE AND ELECTRIC DEVICE CONTROL METHOD - An electric device includes operation unit, working unit, and a number-of-times detecting unit that counts the number of times of instructions being against energy savings. In addition, the device includes time measuring unit that measures time from when the number-of-times detecting unit starts the counting, and a controller that generates a signal to induce a modification of a first energy-saving pattern. When the time is within a first predetermined period, the controller generates a signal that requires the modification of the first energy-saving pattern into a more lenient second energy-saving pattern, with the time being from when time measuring unit starts the measurement to when the number of the times counted by the number-of-times detecting unit reaches a predetermined value. | 07-24-2014 |
20140236328 | LAUNDRY SYSTEM, COMMUNICATION DEVICE, COMMUNICATION METHOD, COMMUNICATION PROGRAM AND WASHING MACHINE - A display control unit switches a display screen to a detergent name list screen based on detergent name list screen information received by a second communication unit, an operation unit accepts a selection of an arbitrary detergent name by a user from a plurality of detergent names displayed as a list on the detergent name list screen, the second communication unit transmits, to a server, detergent name specifying information for specifying the arbitrary detergent name accepted by the operation unit and washing machine specifying information and receives, from the server, detergent information related to a detergent specified based on the detergent name specifying information and the washing machine specifying information, and a first communication unit transmits the detergent information received by the second communication unit to a washing machine. | 08-21-2014 |
20140236375 | ELECTRIC POWER CONDITIONING DEVICE AND METHOD FOR CONDITIONING ELECTRIC POWER - The electric power conditioning device, connected to an apparatus and an electric storage device in a house, comprises an electric power receiving section, a communication section and an operation section. The electric power receiving section, connected to a commercial power supply, acquires a total electric power consumption amount of the commercial power supply. The operation section makes comparison as to whether an integrated value obtained by integrating the total electric power consumption amount and an electric power consumption amount which is an amount of electric power expected to be consumed when the apparatus is operated exceeds a predetermined value. When the integrated value does not exceed, the operation section transmits a use permission signal to the apparatus via the communication section. When the integrated value exceeds, the electric power conditioning device transmits to the electric storage device a supply electric power inquiring signal via the communication section. | 08-21-2014 |
20140250284 | COMMUNICATION DEVICE AND MANAGEMENT METHOD FOR IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION ITEM USING COMMUNICATION DEVICE - In a case where an identification information item determination section ( | 09-04-2014 |
20150017913 | COMMUNICATION METHOD, PROGRAM STORAGE MEDIUM, MOBILE TERMINAL, HOME ELECTRIC APPLIANCE, AND HOME ELECTRIC APPLIANCE OPERATION SETTING SYSTEM - When an appliance communication portion of a home electric appliance receives a set operation data piece transmission request from a mobile terminal, the appliance communication portion transmits a stored set operation data piece. When the appliance communication portion receives the set operation data piece from the mobile terminal, the appliance communication portion sets an operation, defined by the received set operation data piece, as an operation of the home electric appliance to be executed. When a data piece processing portion of the mobile terminal receives a set operation data piece acquisition command from an input portion and receives the set operation data piece from the home electric appliance, the data piece processing portion causes a data piece storage portion to store the received set operation data piece. When the data piece processing portion receives an operation setting command from the input portion, the data piece processing portion causes a first terminal communication portion to transmit the set operation data piece. | 01-15-2015 |
20150039104 | REMOTE CONTROLLING METHOD, COMMUNICATION DEVICE, AND COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM RECORDED WITH COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR PERFORMING REMOTE CONTROL - A mobile device is provided with a communication unit which performs communication via wireless communication, a display unit, and a display control unit which controls the display unit to display a setting input screen for allowing the user to input setting of a household electrical device. The communication unit transmits a request signal for checking whether there is a person in the vicinity of the household electrical device before the setting input screen is displayed by the display control unit. The display control unit controls the display unit to display a setting input disable screen indicating that setting of the household electrical device is not received without causing the display unit to display the setting input screen when there is a person in the vicinity of the household electrical device. | 02-05-2015 |
20150044965 | ELECTRICAL INSTRUMENT - An electrical instrument of the present invention includes: a main function section; a communication section that receives an aspect of a main function to be executed by the main function section from an external information terminal by near field communication; an input section for allowing a user to input an aspect of the main function to be executed by the main function section; a notification section for issuing a notice on information regarding the near field communication; a main function section control unit that controls the main function section based on the aspect of the main function, which is inputted to the input section, and based on the aspect of the main function, which is received by the communication section; a history recording unit that records a near field communication control history that is a history that the main function section control unit has controlled the main function section based on the aspect of the main function, which is received by the communication section; and a notification content decision unit that decides whether or not to issue the notice on the information regarding the near field communication in accordance with whether or not the near field communication control history is recorded in the history recording unit. | 02-12-2015 |