To provide a washing machine having cloth amount detecting means capable of accurately detecting a cloth amount in a drum.
The washing machine includes a control section 31 having: a first detecting step of measuring an angular acceleration α1 in acceleration during an increase in rotation speed from a predetermined rotation speed N1 to N2 by controlling a voltage or a current to be applied to a motor 7 to generate acceleration torque to be fixed at a predetermined value to accelerate the rotation of a drum 3; and a second detecting step of measuring an angular acceleration α2 in deceleration during a decrease in rotation speed from a predetermined rotation speed N3 to N4 by controlling the voltage or the current to be applied to the motor 7 to generate deceleration torque to be fixed at a predetermined value to decelerate the rotation of the drum 3. The machine can detect a cloth amount with high accuracy, by deriving a true value from data obtained by performing the first step and the second step three or more odd number of times on the basis of the angular acceleration α1 in acceleration and the angular acceleration α2 in deceleration.
YANAGI SHINSUKE
ITO TAKESHI
Daisuke Nagano
Kentaro Fujii