Patent ID: 9434070
Filing Date: 2016-09-06
CPC Classification: B25J,B65G,G05B,G06T

Claim Text:
1. An article pickup apparatus comprising: a robot including a hand capable of holding an article; a three-dimensional measurement instrument measuring surface positions of a plurality of articles randomly piled on a three-dimensional space to acquire position information of a plurality of three-dimensional points; a density calculation unit calculating a density distribution indicating a degree of a distribution of the plurality of three-dimensional points in the three-dimensional space, based on the position information measured by the three-dimensional measurement instrument; a local maximum position calculation unit calculating a density local maximum position where a density is locally maximized, based on the density distribution calculated by the density calculation unit; a hand position posture calculation unit calculating a hand position posture based on the density local maximum position calculated by the local maximum position calculation unit, the hand position posture being a position and a posture of the hand capable of picking up an article at the density local maximum position or in the vicinity of the density local maximum position; and a robot control unit controlling the robot so as to move the hand to the hand position posture calculated by the hand position posture calculation unit to pick up the article.