Controller of work piece-conveying robot

A controller for work piece-conveying robot that controls a motion of a robot hand in a manual jog feed by using a teaching operation panel used for an operation of said robot hand adapted to grasp a work piece, said robot hand being mounted to a tip of an arm of a robot which carries out at least one of supplying and taking-out of said work piece to and from a machine tool, said controller comprising:

• a coordinate system storage section for storing one or more manual jog feed coordinate systems which define a direction of said manual jog feed of said robot hand;
• a working area setting section for setting to said machine tool a working area to which one of said one or more manual jog feed coordinate systems stored in said coordinate system storage section is assigned;
• a hand position obtaining section for obtaining a current position of said robot hand at each specified sampling period;
• a determination section for determining whether or not said current position of said robot hand obtained by said hand position obtaining section is within said working area set by said working area setting section;
• and,
• a coordinate system switching section for switching a present manual jog feed coordinate system to a manual jog feed coordinate system assigned to said working area if it is determined by said determination section that said current position of said robot hand is within said working area.