Patent ID: 9721184
Date: 2017-08-01
CPC Classifications: B25J,G05B,G06K,G06T,Y10S

Claim:
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 on surfaces of articles; a connected set calculation unit determining a connected set made by connecting three-dimensional points present in the vicinity of each other among the plurality of three-dimensional points acquired by the three-dimensional measurement instrument; an article identification unit identifying a position and a posture of an article based on the position information of three-dimensional points belonging to the connected set, a hand position posture calculation unit determining a hand position posture, the hand position posture being a position and a posture of the hand capable of picking up the article identified by the article identification unit; and a robot control unit controlling the robot so as to move the hand to the hand position posture determined by the hand position posture calculation unit to pick up the article.