Control apparatus and control method for robot
AssigneeSeiko Epson Corporation
InventorKana Kanazawa
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A control apparatus that controls a plurality of robots, includes a failure prediction part that predicts a time of failure with respect to each component of the robots, a maintenance time adjustment part that adjusts maintenance times of the plurality of robots based on the components for which the times of failure are predicted, and a load adjustment part that adjust workloads of the robots according to the predicted times of failure for activation until the maintenance times.
Claims8
A control apparatus for controlling a plurality of robots, comprising:
- a failure prediction part configured to predict a time of failure with respect to each of a plurality of components of each of the plurality of robots, and using the predicted time of failure to predict a time of failure for each of the plurality of robots;
- a maintenance time adjustment part configured to determine whether predicted failure times of the plurality of robots fall within a predetermined period and, when it is determined that the predicted failure times of the plurality of robots fall within the predetermined period, adjust a maintenance time based on predicted times of failure for the plurality of robots such that a predicted failure time of a first robot of the plurality of robots is prior to the adjusted maintenance time and such that a predicted failure time of a second robot of the plurality of robots is after the adjusted maintenance time;
- and
- a load adjustment part configured to adjust workloads of the plurality of robots by reducing the workload of the first robot whose predicted failure time is prior to the adjusted maintenance time;
- and
- increasing the workload of the second robot whose predicted failure time is after the adjusted maintenance time, wherein
- an overall production volume per unit time is maintained from the predicted failure time of the first robot to the adjusted maintenance time.
A control method for a plurality of robots executed by a control apparatus, comprising:
- predicting a time of failure with respect to each of a plurality of components of each of the plurality of robots;
- determining whether predicted failure times of the plurality of robots fall within a predetermined period;
- adjusting, when it is determined that the predicted failure times of the plurality of robots fall within the predetermined period, a maintenance time based on predicted times of failure for the plurality of robots such that a predicted failure time of a first robot of the plurality of robots is prior to the adjusted maintenance time and such that a predicted failure time of a second robot of the plurality of robots is after the adjusted maintenance time;
- and
- adjusting workloads of the plurality of robots by:
- reducing the workload of the first robot whose predicted failure time is prior to the adjusted maintenance time;
- and
- increasing the workload of the second robot whose predicted failure time is after the adjusted maintenance time, wherein
- an overall production volume per unit time is maintained from the predicted failure time of the first robot to the adjusted maintenance time.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.