A mobile plant for orienting a tool with respect to a hole is provided. The plant includes an arm assembly for supporting a tool wherein the tool is adapted to be lowered into the hole. The plant also includes a primary sensor for sensing the geographical location of the tool, and a secondary sensor for sensing the location and/or orientation of the hole. In use, the plant adjusts the position of the tool supported by the arm assembly based on the geographical location sensed by the primary sensor and the location and/or orientation sensed by the secondary sensor, in order to align the tool supported by the arm assembly with the hole.

There is provided an image processing apparatus, which are capable of controlling a motion of a robot with high accuracy without coding a complex robot motion control program point by point. First coordinate values being each of position coordinates of movement destinations of an end effector of a robot are acquired. Second coordinate values being position coordinates of a target are detected based on an image of the target captured at each of the movement destinations. Selections of a plurality of operations which a robot controller is made to execute are accepted out of a plurality of operations including at least an operation of moving the end effector to the first coordinate values or an operation of moving the end effector to the second coordinate values, to accept a setting of an execution sequence of the plurality of operations the selections of which have been accepted.

A robot system includes a robot, a vision sensor, a controller, and an input unit. The vision sensor configured to measure a feature point and obtain a measured coordinate value. The controller configured to control the robot. The input unit configured to receive an input from a user toward the controller. The controller obtains, via the input unit, setting information data on a determination point which is different from the feature point. The robot system uses a coordinate value of the determination point and the measured coordinate value, and determines whether the robot is taking a target position and orientation.

A manufacturing method for joining first and second members to create a joined piece using a robot with pre-inputted instruction data. The method includes operating the robot to hold the second member for joining to the first member and photographing the second member to obtain an image of the second member at the holding position; comparing the image to a reference image of a joining position of a reference second member joined to a reference first member; determining a deviation amount by which the holding position of the second member deviates from the joining position in the reference image; determining a correction amount for correcting the holding position of the second member is to be corrected in order to reduce the deviation amount of the holding position of the second member; correcting the holding position of the second member according to the correction amount, and then subsequently joining the first and second members.

A first characteristic portion of a first workpiece and a second characteristic portion of a second workpiece are previously determined. A characteristic amount detection unit detects a first characteristic amount related to the position of the first characteristic portion and a second characteristic amount related to the position of the second characteristic portion in an image captured by a camera. A calculation unit calculates, as a relative position amount, the difference between the first characteristic amount and the second characteristic amount. A command generation unit generates a movement command for operating a robot based on a relative position amount in the image captured by the camera and a relative position amount in a predetermined reference image.