Patent 7818090 was granted and assigned to Panasonic on October, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method of controlling movement of a mobile robot for realizing safe and appropriate accompanying behavior to follow an accompanied target includes detecting at least a position of the accompanied target, and controlling the movement of the mobile robot, based on the detected position of the accompanied target, so that the mobile robot moves along a path that is parallel to a moving direction of the accompanied target.