Article conveyance apparatus

An article conveyance apparatus, comprising:

• a plurality of conveyor carriages coupled for conveying articles, the coupled conveyor carriages being enabled to travel along a conveyance path, each of the conveyor carriages being coupled by a coupling part to another one of the conveyor carriages placed in a longitudinal direction with respect to a traveling direction of the conveyor carriages, the conveyor carriages comprising a measuring unit that is provided in the coupling part and measures a force applied between the conveyor carriages coupled by the coupling part;
• a tension calculation unit that calculates a tension between the conveyor carriages based on the force applied between the conveyor carriages measured by the measuring units;
• a calculation unit that calculates a force applied to wheels provided in a gap between adjacent ones of the conveyor carriages, based on the tension between the conveyor carriages calculated by the tension calculation unit;
• and
• a controller that determines whether the wheels are floating based on the force applied to the wheels calculated by the calculation unit, the controller stopping the travel of the conveyor carriages or providing a warning if the controller determined the wheels are floating,
• wherein the wheels are possible to float by a compressive force between the adjacent ones of the conveyor carriages.