Patent ID: 7539558

Claim:
A robot apparatus comprising: a robot mechanism unit having a robot arm and a robot main body to which the robot arm is attached; an object recognizing unit for recognizing any one or a plurality of objects among three types of objects including a moving object, an animal, and a person as an object to be shielded; a control unit for controlling the robot mechanism unit so as to carry out a work operation by using the robot arm of the robot mechanism unit, while shielding the object recognized by the object recognizing unit from entering a working space of the robot mechanism unit by allowing one portion of the robot mechanism unit to carry out a shielding operation, wherein the control unit controls the robot mechanism unit so as to carry out the shielding operation by changing a distance between the object to be shielded recognized by the object recognizing unit and the robot arm, in response to a relative positional relationship between the object recognized by the object recognizing unit and the working space of the robot mechanism unit; and a database in which information relating to contents of jobs to be carried out by the robot mechanism unit and information relating to presence or absence of continuity corresponding to the contents of jobs are stored in association with each other, wherein the control unit is operable to read out the information from the database, and determine necessity of continuity of the respective contents of jobs, and upon allowing the robot mechanism unit to carry out the contents of jobs having the necessity of continuity, control the robot mechanism unit so as to carry out a shielding operation that is different from a shielding operation to be carried out in a case in which the contents of jobs have no necessity of continuity.