POSITION MEASURING METHOD FOR RECTANGULAR LOAD

PURPOSE: To obtain a position measuring method which is hardly influenced by disturbance light and in which a measurement can be performed in a short time with good accuracy and surely by measuring the three-dimensional position with reference to a handling apparatus of a load on the basis of triangulation and the angle of rotation in the horizontal direction. CONSTITUTION: Rectangular loads 13 of the same kind and of the same dimensions for every palette are loaded in prescribed positions on respective feed palettes. Then, beams of laser slit light are projected at the loads 13 from slit-light radiation devices 6a, 6b, 6c, and the image of the loads are picked up by an image pickup device 7. The three-dimensional position X, Y, Z on the surface of every load 13 in the coordinate system (x, y, z) of a handling robot 1 and the angle of rotation θ in the horizontal direction are found by an image computing device 9. Then, the X, Y, Z and θ(coordinates of a relative position) which are found by the device 9 are sent to an overall control device 10, and the device 10 transmits the relative position coordinates as the takeout position of every load 13 and loading-position coordinates on a shipping palette 5 to a robot control device 3.