To provide a highly reliable, cost-effective traveling collector that can determine the positions of fallen objects, such as balls, on the ground using a simple method, or determine the correct positions of fallen objects, such as balls, on the ground only by improving software and without the need for significant changes to hardware. The traveling collector includes a count sensor as a sensor for detecting the position of each collected ball at a position detected by a satellite positioning system, for example. A controller determines a position, which is obtained by reflecting, based on the positional information on the ball collector at a time point when the ball was counted by touching the count sensor, the movement distance of the ball collector from the time each ball was picked up from the ground by a ball collection wheel till the ball was counted by touching the count sensor in a direction opposite to the traveling direction of the ball collector at that time, as the actual position where each ball was picked up.

A collector comprises a main body comprising: front wheels; rear wheels; a driving device; a battery; a collection device to pick up a ball; and a collection container to accommodate the ball. The battery and the collection container are disposed between respective axles for the front and rear wheels, and respective positions of centers of gravity of the battery and the collection container are situated in an area defined between a first tangential line tangent to an upper portion of the front wheel and an upper portion of the rear wheel and a second tangential line tangent to a lower portion of the front wheel and a lower portion of the rear wheel. This structure improves weight balance of the collector and enhances stability during travel.

A dual functional robot for collecting rollable objects capable of an upright position and a horizontal position, in which the robot includes a way to propel the robot; a way to control propulsion of the robot; a way to locate the rollable object; a way to collect the rollable object; a way to store the rollable object; a way to support the robot and allow the robot to move across a surface in a low-friction manner; and a way to stably reorient the robot from the horizontal position into the upright position.

Provided is a highly reliable, cost-effective scattered object collection system that can efficiently collect scattered objects by reducing unnecessary traveling of a traveling collector. The scattered object collection system includes a traveling collector that performs a collecting operation by picking up balls B while traveling in a work area W, sets a virtual work area Z (or a virtual priority work area Za) to an area in the work area W where balls are relatively densely present and in the vicinity of the storage space of balls, and allows the traveling collector to perform a collecting operation in the virtual work area Z (or the virtual priority work area Za) with higher priority than the other areas.

A method for retrieving a ball on and about a sports court and for controllably releasing the ball includes a retriever having a vertical ball ejector, and upon ball collection, returning the ball to a desired location in the air or along the sports court surface. The sports court may be a tennis court or a pickleball court, with the method for retrieving and returning a ball being conducted with tennis balls or pickleballs on the respective court type.

A method for retrieving a ball on and about a sports court and for controllably releasing the ball includes a retriever having a vertical ball ejector, and upon ball collection, returning the ball to a desired location in the air or along the sports court surface. The sports court may be a tennis court or a pickleball court, with the method for retrieving and returning a ball being conducted with tennis balls or pickleballs on the respective court type.

The present disclosure discloses a tennis ball-picking robot, including a chassis assembly, a ball-entering control element group, and a ball-collecting mechanism, the ball-entering control element group being disposed on a front end of the chassis assembly and the ball-collecting mechanism being disposed on a rear side of the chassis assembly. The tennis ball-picking robot incorporates multiple AI technologies such as computer vision, simultaneous localization and mapping, and robotics kinematics, enabling intelligent following, mapping and localization, and path planning. The robot can efficiently collect the tennis balls dropped on the court, and the players can also select a ball-picking area and a ball-picking speed pattern of the robot through an APP, improving the ball-picking efficiency, avoiding consuming the physical power of the players due to manual picking, improving the training effect by ultimately ensuring their focus during training, and reducing the training cost.

A collection apparatus including an autonomous power supply means and an image acquisition means for acquiring image sequences of at least one area of surveillance is disclosed. The collection apparatus may further include control means connected to the image acquisition means for receiving and processing the acquired sequences of images, to detect the presence and position of said game elements, and to send a control command to move the collection apparatus to collect a detected spherical game element. The collection apparatus also includes interaction means for interacting with a player to deliver a previously collected spherical game element to the player and a delivery device controlled by the control means to perform the delivery. An automatic collection system is also disclosed that uses two collection apparatuses, operating in a complementary and/or synchronized way to collect and deliver a spherical element to a player, on request by the player.

A method and system to retrieve golf balls by a single user. By utilizing a vehicle equipped with a receiver to receive a wireless signal that operates to automatically move the vehicle without human intervention, a single person has the capability of moving two vehicles with a golf ball retrieving device connected between the two vehicles to collect golf balls. The golf ball retrieving device is connected between the two vehicles using a winch system on each vehicle. The golf ball retrieving device is then pulled from one vehicle to the other using the winch system to retrieve golf balls. The two vehicles are moved to define a new path between them, and the process is repeated.

A ball collecting system includes a picker, and a pit configured to enable balls discharged from the picker to be collected in a ball-collecting space. At least one basket whose upper part is open is disposed in the ball-collecting space to allow the discharged balls to be dropped and stored in the basket. The ball-collecting space is configured such that one end thereof in a horizontal direction is formed as an open zone, to allow the basket to be taken out from the ball-collecting space through the open zone.