A robot system according to one aspect of the present disclosure includes a robot arm mechanism to which a hand for gripping a workpiece stored in a container with an opening at a top of the container is attached, a sensor configured to obtain two-dimensional image data including the container and three-dimensional point cloud data including the container, and a control apparatus configured to identify a position, direction, and size of the opening of the container based on the image data and the point cloud data and control the robot arm mechanism so as not to interfere with the container. It is possible to identify the position, orientation, and size of the opening of the container without performing a touch-up operation on the container.

A method for the start-up operation of a multi-axis system, the multi-axis system having segments which are movable by a controller in one or more axes, and a tool which is connected to one of the segments and is movable and drivable to a specified position by the controller. The method includes assigning a workspace and a safe space to the multi-axis system, arranging optical markers in an environment, making it possible for an augmented reality system to determine the position of a camera system which records the multi-axis system within the environment, defining a bounding body for each of the components such that the bounding body encloses the component, calculating a position of the bounding body during the movement of the multi-axis system, visualizing the bounding bodies together with an image recorded by the camera system, and checking whether the bounding body intersects with the safe space.

A terminal device includes a coordinate-system setting portion which sets a user coordinate system on the basis of a marker included in an image, photographed by a photographing portion, including an industrial robot and a work space of the industrial robot, a coordinate giving portion which gives a coordinate of the user coordinate system to point-group data obtained by a distance measuring portion which measures a distance to an object included in the image, a region specifying portion which specifies a robot region on the user coordinate system corresponding to the industrial robot on the basis of shape size information of the industrial robot corresponding to a type of the industrial robot and attitude information of the industrial robot, and a point-group creating portion for avoidance which creates point-group data for interference avoidance by removing the point-group data included in the robot region from the point-group data obtained by the distance measuring portion.

An interference check device includes a model-number upper-limit input unit to which a model upper-limit number of geometric models allocated to a modeling target of interference check is input, a modeling unit generating model candidates from the modeling target using geometric models equal to or less than the model upper limit number, a processing-computation-amount upper-limit setting unit setting a computation upper-limit amount of interference check based on a computation processing amount required for each process performed by a controller controlling the modeling target, a minimum-enclosure-volume-model determination unit determining a model candidate having smallest model enclosure volume as a model for the modeling target from the model candidates that can perform calculation processing of interference check with equal to or less than the computation upper-limit amount, and an interference check unit performing interference check between models using determined model.

An object interference checking technique using height maps, for machine tooling and other applications. A CAD model of a workpiece or other obstacle is converted to a height map defining obstacle height above a plane of a reference frame for each cell of a grid. A machine tool center point path is then transformed to the same reference frame. Interference checking is performed by comparing a height coordinate of each transformed tool path check point to the height map value for a corresponding grid cell. Any interference that is detected is addressed by defining new path points with increased height coordinate to replace the interference-critical path points. An entire tool can be interference checked by creating a bottom-up height map of the tool and comparing each pixel of the tool height map against the corresponding grid cell of the obstacle height map.

An object interference checking technique using collision maps. A CAD model of a workpiece is converted to an obstacle height map defining obstacle height above a reference plane for each cell of a grid. A CAD model of a tool is used to construct a tool height map. The obstacle height map and the tool height map are used to generate a collision map defining a collision-free tool height above each grid cell of the collision map. The collision map is generated by scanning the tool height map over the obstacle height map and, for each scan point, determining a height of the tool height map which results in no interferences between any pixel of the tool height map and a corresponding pixel of the obstacle height map. A collision check of a tool trajectory is then performed by comparing trajectory check points to grid cells of the collision map.