Work pick-up apparatus

A work pick-up apparatus which picks up an object work out of a plurality of works accommodated in units of a container case having a plurality of cells, each cell having a predetermined size and a predetermined location expressed in a coordinate system associated with said work pick-up apparatus, said work pick-up apparatus comprising:

• visual sensor means for obtaining an image of said case;
• memory means for storing shape characteristic information representative of the shape characteristics of said object work;
• input means for inputting work position information representing a position of an object work to be picked up within said case, said work position information being expressed in terms of the coordinate system associated with said work pick-up apparatus;
• and
• measuring means for determining a position of said work to be picked up in terms of said coordinate system associated with said pick-up apparatus,
• said measuring means comprising:
• first conversion means for converting the work position information expressed in the coordinate system associated with the apparatus into a work position expressed in terms of a coordinate system associated with said visual sensor means;
• area setting means for setting an image area around the work position expressed in terms of the coordinate system associated with said visual sensor means, and for obtaining image information of the set image area, the image area being selected as incrementally larger than the size of the work accommodating unit of said container case;
• processing means for subjecting an obtained work image to pattern recognition processing, and for searching an image having shape characteristics similar to those of an image of said object work from a processed image, the search being performed using shape characteristics of the work stored in the memory means;
• computing means for computing a position of a searched image;
• and
• second conversion means for converting said position of said searched image expressed in terms of the coordinate system associated with said visual sensor means into a coordinate position expressed in terms of the coordinate system associated with the apparatus.