Patent ID: 8660685

Claim:
A robot system comprising: a robot comprising a grasper to grasp a workpiece in a bin containing a plurality of workpieces; and a robot control device configured to control an operation of the robot, the robot control device comprising: a workpiece shape memory configured to store a shape of the workpieces, each of the workpieces having a head portion and a rod-like portion, the head portion having a circular through hole having an inner diameter larger than an outer diameter of the rod-like portion, the rod-like portion extending in one direction from the head portion; a shape sensor configured to detect shape information about the workpieces in the bin; a target workpiece detector configured to detect a graspable workpiece among the workpieces in the bin based on the shape information detected by the shape sensor, the graspable workpiece being a workpiece satisfying a condition stored in advance; a grasping information memory configured to store a grasping position indicating which portion of the graspable workpiece is to be grasped by the robot; a grasping operation controller configured to control the robot to grasp the graspable workpiece detected by the target workpiece detector and to pick the grasped workpiece from the bin; and a disturbing operation controller configured to control, if no graspable workpiece is detected by the target workpiece detector, the robot to perform a workpiece disturbing operation to disturb a distribution of the workpieces in the bin, wherein the grasping operation controller is configured to insert the grasper of the robot into the through hole of the graspable workpiece, and is configured to widen the grasper to grasp the graspable workpiece, wherein the grasping operation controller is configured to operate the robot such that, after the robot grasps the graspable workpiece, a tip of the rod-like portion of the graspable workpiece grasped by the robot points downward in a direction of gravity, wherein the grasping information memory stores operation information about a plurality of different types of workpiece disturbing operations in advance, and wherein the disturbing operation controller is configured to perform one of the plurality of different types of workpiece disturbing operations based on a predetermined order of priority of the workpiece disturbing operations, the one of the plurality of different types of workpiece disturbing operations satisfying a predetermined workpiece condition.