Article supply apparatus
AssigneeFanuc Corporation
InventorYoshio Motowaki
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An article supply apparatus includes an inclined passage which inclines downwardly toward a predetermined direction, a vibration imparting device which vibrates the inclined passage, an article feeding device which feeds a plurality of articles to the upper end side of the inclined passage, a visual sensor which captures images of the articles on the inclined passage and which obtains information for identification of at least a position of each of the articles on the inclined passage, and a robot arm which picks up the articles one by one from the inclined passage by using the information obtained by the visual sensor and which supplies the picked-up articles to a predetermined supply destination.
Claims6
An article supply apparatus, comprising:
- an inclined passage inclined downwardly toward a predetermined direction;
- a vibration imparting device imparting vibration to the inclined passage;
- an article feeding device feeding a plurality of articles to an upper end side of the inclined passage;
- a visual sensor capturing an image of the plurality of articles on the inclined passage and obtaining information that enables identification of at least a position of each of the articles;
- a robot arm picking up the articles one by one from the inclined passage by using the information obtained by the visual sensor and supplying the picked-up articles to a predetermined supply destination;
- and
- an article return passage located below the inclined passage, receiving the articles dropped from a lower end side of the inclined passage and returning the articles toward the opposite side of the predetermined direction,
- wherein the article feeding device receives the articles from a lower end side of the article return passage and feeds the received articles to the upper end side of the inclined passage.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.