Patent ID: 7686176

Claim:
A suspended transporting carriage traveling on a rail installed on or near a ceiling of a semiconductor manufacturing factory and transporting a transported object in a suspended condition, comprising: a gripping mechanism for gripping said transported object; a hoisting mechanism for hoisting said gripping mechanism; a traveling mechanism, on which said hoisting mechanism is mounted in a suspended condition, for traveling on said rail, said gripping mechanism comprising (i) an elongating and contracting device capable of horizontally elongating and contracting and (ii) a gripping device disposed at a tip portion of said elongating and contracting device for selectively gripping the transported object; and an attitude keeping device, which detachably fixes one portion of said gripping mechanism and one portion of rack plates of a rack device to each other, for keeping or stabilizing an attitude of said gripping mechanism with respect to said rack device, said hoisting mechanism comprising a hoisting belt wound out to move down said gripping mechanism and wound up to move up said gripping mechanism, said transported object being a FOUP to contain a plurality of semiconductor substrates, said gripping device gripping the upper part of said FOUP, said attitude keeping device detachably fixing said gripping mechanism on said rack device, when said hoisting belt is wound out to move said gripping mechanism down to the position at a predetermined height and said transported object is put onto said rack device or said transported object is transferred between said gripping mechanism and said rack device.