Patent ID: 8863685

Claim:
A conveying apparatus for a honeycomb structure, the apparatus comprising: a hand that is capable of gripping the columnar honeycomb structure arranged in a vertical direction; an arm that holds the hand at an end thereof; an arm turning section that turns the arm around at least one vertical axis; a hand rotating section that rotates the hand around the vertical axis with respect to the arm; a camera that takes an image of an end surface of the honeycomb structure gripped by the hand; an initial rotation angle recognizing section that recognizes, based on the image in the camera, an initial rotation angle of the honeycomb structure around the vertical axis at a reference position where the image has been taken; an arm turning control section that drives the arm turning section to convey the honeycomb structure gripped by the hand from the reference position to above a plugging mask; a required rotation angle acquiring section that acquires a hand rotation angle required to adjust the rotation angle of the honeycomb structure on the plugging mask to a desired final rotation angle whereby a predetermined set of through-holes in the honeycomb structure is aligned with a predetermined set of holes in the plugging mask, the final rotation angle being based on the initial rotation angle recognized at the reference position and a conveying rotation angle of the honeycomb structure around the vertical axis associated with the driving of the arm turning section from the reference position to above the plugging mask; and a hand rotation control section that drives the hand rotating section based on the required hand rotation angle to rotate the honeycomb structure.