JPS6056658A - Automatic travelling carrier vehicle - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make it possible to effect travelling in every direction accurately and easily, by providing a pair of wheels which may be controlled in steering angle, rotational direction, and rotational speed, and air cushions for preventing falling down of a vehicular body. CONSTITUTION:Air cushions 2A and 2B are provided diagonally at a front-left portion and a rear-right portion of a lower portion of a vehicular body 1. Wheel devices 3A and 3B are provided in the reversed diagonal position. Each of the wheel devices 3A and 3B is provided with a pair of driving wheels 6 rotatably supported through a vertical shaft to a revolutional base 4 having a steering motor. A rotational direction and a rotational speed of the driving wheels 6 are controlled by drive motors 7. The air cushions 2A and 2B act to inject compression air to a floor surface thereby to floatingly support the vehicular body and prevent falling down of the vehicular body.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Technical Field of the Invention] This invention mainly relates to a system that transports various products and other objects to their destinations by moving them automatically or by remote control in various production factories. Regarding the self-driving guided vehicle.

[Technical background of the invention and its problems]

In recent years, in various production factories, etc., certain routes or various routes can be freely controlled automatically or remotely to move various products, etc. due to automation of production lines, without using guidance equipment such as rails. There is a strong demand for self-driving guided vehicles.

However, although it seems easy at first glance to make a guided vehicle automatically travel within a limited space such as a factory, there are many problems that are quite difficult. In other words, for example, due to the equipment in the factory, it is required not only to travel around large curves, but also to run around in order to suddenly change direction at right angles, or to travel sideways at right angles.

By the way, many self-driving guided vehicles with a 4FJ construction that meet these requirements have already been proposed, but the guided vehicles so far have been four-wheeled vehicles, and moreover, the driving wheels 'I' and 3u have been constructed with casters, etc. At first glance, this caster wheel seems to be convenient because it automatically steers the wheels in the direction of movement, but the whiteness of the traction wheels (driving wheels) and the towed wheels (M driving wheels) may cause them to interfere with each other when driving. Since the caster wheels are oriented 180 degrees apart, it is not possible to easily apply driving force to the caster wheels and use them as traction wheels or as towed wheels. However, the caster wheel has a caster effect of 106,1 by shifting the caster rotation axis and the center of the wheel that is in contact with the ground, so the caster wheel is 7J li'j
When the wheel is pulled by the wheel, the Kitostar rotating shaft tends to rotate around the grounding point of the wheel with a radius equal to the value of the deviation amount, and then start rotating. There are many disadvantages such as it is extremely difficult to judge whether this will happen or not, and the accuracy of repeating the traveling trajectory required for an automated guided vehicle becomes unclear.

In addition, although this is good for maneuverability in a four-wheeled vehicle where one rigid body is supported by four wheels, unless a complicated support spring mechanism is provided for each wheel, the running surface will be uneven. In such a case, one of the four wheels may float, and especially if that floating wheel is the drive wheel, the running trajectory will be greatly disturbed, which is extremely inconvenient as the trajectory must be corrected considerably. There was a problem.

[Purpose of the invention]

This invention was made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and although it has a simple structure, it can freely and automatically drive around factories, etc., various driving modes can be executed accurately, and it can overcome obstacles such as considerable unevenness of the driving road surface. The purpose of the present invention is to provide an extremely high-performance automatic traveling conveyance vehicle that can run stably without disrupting its travel trajectory even when the vehicle is moving.

[Summary of the invention]

The automatic traveling conveyance vehicle of the present invention is an automatic traveling conveyance vehicle that transports goods by traveling automatically or by remote control, and is capable of controlling the orientation, rotational driving direction, and rotational speed of wheels at the bottom of the vehicle body. The configuration includes a pair of wheel devices and a cushion that prevents the vehicle from falling over without contacting the road surface while blowing compressed air downward. However, since these two wheel devices alone would cause the vehicle to fall over, an air cushion was installed to prevent the vehicle from falling over. At the same time, the air cushion blows out compressed air downward while keeping the air cushion from contacting the road surface. This is to enable proper running with as little adverse effect as possible on running by the two wheel devices ffj.

In other words, the automatic traveling vehicle of the present invention is characterized by the fact that the air cushion can bear up to a certain load depending on the air pressure and amount of air supplied, but cannot bear a load above a certain level, so In order to allow the vehicle to travel sufficiently when no goods are loaded and when the vehicle is fully loaded, the load is carried by a pair of I'l single-wheel devices, so that no abnormal eccentric load is placed on the vehicle. In other words, as long as the vehicle body does not tilt to one side beyond the load bearing limit of the air cushion due to tilted loading of transported goods, etc., the air cushion acts as a non-directional support arm, and some irregularities on the running road surface are covered by air. The rubber bellows of the cushion rides over the cushion smoothly, ensuring proper and stable running.

In addition, since the wheel device is only placed in two locations on the vehicle body,
By controlling the steering direction of the driving wheels of these two wheel devices and the rotational driving direction of the wheels, infinite combinations of running directions of the vehicle body are possible, and the vehicle runs in a straight line.

You can freely run curves, right angles, turns, etc., and you can easily select various routes.

Furthermore, during the automatic traveling transport of this invention, various guidance devices such as guidance by laying a guide wire, radio guidance, self-inertia guidance, etc. can be applied, and various configurations of wheel devices can be freely adopted. It is something.

(Example of the invention) An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

First of all, Fig. 1 is a plan view showing a schematic configuration of the automatic traveling guided vehicle, Fig. 2 is a side view of the same, Fig. 3 is a sectional view of the air cushion section at the lower part of the vehicle body, and Fig. 4 shows various examples of traveling movement. FIG.

In FIGS. 1 to 3, reference numeral 1 indicates the body of an automated guided vehicle, and the lower part of the vehicle body 1 is located at one diagonal position of the vehicle body 1, that is, for example, the front left side of the vehicle body 1. Cushions 2A and 2B are provided on the rear right side, respectively. J, and the other diagonal position, that is, the front right side of the vehicle body 1 and the IG jj u side, respectively.
A, 3B! ii! It is set up.

The pair of wheel assemblies 3A and 3B each have a vertical shaft 5 rotatably provided on the lower surface of the body 1 via a turning base 4 having a steering motor (not shown), and a lower end of the vertical shaft 5. A drive motor 7 rotatably supports a pair of drive wheels 6, 6 on both sides thereof, and is supported to rotate integrally around the vertical shaft 5 to rotationally drive the drive wheels 6, 6. with a configuration in which wheel devices 3A and 3 are installed, respectively.
B. Since there are already many known examples of four-wheel systems in which each pair of drive wheels 6, 6 is independently steered, a detailed explanation of the internal structure will be omitted, but as mentioned above, When a pair of drive wheels 6, 6 are provided, a differential drive mechanism (not shown) is installed between the two wheels to prevent undue slippage during steering.

Further, the pair of air cushions 2A and 2B are fed via a take-out base 8 fixed to the lower surface of the vehicle body 1, respectively.
! As shown in FIG. 3, a receiving plate 11 with a ventilation hole 11a is provided on the top surface of a bottom plate 8a which has an opening at the center of the lower end of a box-shaped mounting base 8.
is fixed by a pin 1-stopper, and the above-mentioned method J [9 is attached to the upper side of this receiving plate 11 with its discharge port passing through in alignment with the above-mentioned ventilation port 11a, and the above-mentioned rubber bellows 10 has a cross section of approximately A cylinder having a C-shaped annular shape, whose upper peripheral edge is airtightly clamped and fixed to the lower surface of the bottom plate 8a by bolts with a heat presser 12, and whose lower peripheral edge protrudes from the center of the lower surface of the receiving plate 11. Flange-shaped seat plate 1 at the lower end of the shaped support 13
4 is airtightly clamped and fixed to the lower surface by a bellows holder 15 with bolts. and the above law [119
Compressed air is introduced into the rubber bellows 10 by the air blowing from the rubber bellows 10, and the rubber bellows 10 expands.While the compressed air is being blown out from the small holes 10a formed near the lower edge of the rubber bellows 10, the vehicle travels. The vehicle body 1 is supported in a non-contact state with a slight gap between the road surface 16 and the vehicle body 1 so as not to fall over. Note that the receiving plate 11 has a separate structure from the bottom plate 8a of the base 8, but the bellows structure and If the assembly method is changed, the second retainer 11 and the bottom plate 8a may be integrated.

Further, a cylindrical stopper 17 is provided on the lower surface of the seat plate 14 of the support body 13 (5) and further protrudes downward, and the lower surface of the abutment plate 17a at the lower end of this stopper 17 is provided with a highly abrasion-resistant slide. The moving plate 18 is heavily attached, and normally the road surface 1
However, if the vehicle body 1 tilts beyond the forward hanging load limit of the air cushion for some reason, it will contact the road surface 16 to prevent further tilting and overturning.

In addition, this type of automatic traveling conveyance vehicle is equipped with various equipment depending on the purpose of use, but in this embodiment, as shown in FIG. This makes it possible to automatically load and unload the transported goods 20 from a predetermined location onto and from the transport platform 1a of the vehicle body 1. It is also possible to directly assemble the transported article 20 to a target machine tool (not shown).

Furthermore, since there are many types of objects to be transported of this type, it goes without saying that it is possible to replace or combine with other transporting object loading and unloading mechanisms in addition to the above-mentioned Robot l-19. .

The operation of the automatic traveling vehicle having the above configuration will now be explained. Control of the vehicle body 1 such as stoppage, steering direction, forward movement, backward movement, speed, etc. is carried out by the two lower wheel devices 3A,
This is done by controlling the direction, forward/reverse rotation drive direction, and rotational speed 1g of each of the drive wheels 6, 3B using a generally known method using an independent steering motor and drive motor 7. The vehicle body 1 automatically runs 1j along a planned course. In other words, the system is controlled so as to follow a guide line laid out on a preset course, or the position is automatically determined in relation to a preset target.
Alternatively, by calculating the target from the absolute coordinate axis direction of a gyro and the distance traveled, etc., the vehicle is steered, driven, or braked so that it travels along the planned course. Ru.

At this time, the air cushions 2A, 2+3 continue to send compressed air into each rubber bellows 10 by performing the blowing operation of the air cushion 9. With this, the rubber bellows 10 has a cross section of C.
Since it has a letter-shaped shape and has a larger outer diameter than the part facing the road surface 1G, it expands with compressed air and tries to inflate downward to press the road surface 16, and the plurality of rubber bellows 10 Compressed air is blown out from the small hole 10a of the rubber bellows 10 to form a pneumatic chamber between it and the road surface 16 on the lower side of the bellows 10, and this air pressure is equivalent to the value obtained by multiplying this by the area of the lower side of the rubber bellows 10. The load will be supported. In addition, the pressurized air flows out to the outer circumferential side while creating a small gap between the rubber bellows 10 and the road surface 16, so that the rubber bellows 10 is held in a non-contact state with the road surface 16. At this time, the pressure characteristics of the blower 9 and the size of the rubber bellows 10 are appropriately selected,
The air cushions 2A, 2B allow the rubber bellows 10 to bear a certain appropriate range of load while floating at a substantially constant height above the road surface 16.

The appropriate load range is Air Cushion 2A
, 2B, the wheel device 3
It is determined so that either A or 3B does not rise from the road surface 16, or even if it does not rise, it does not spin or skid and cannot perform its function as a driving wheel. Through proper selection, the necessary load of the vehicle body 1 can be supported by each drive wheel 6, 6 of the pair of wheel devices 3A, 3B disposed diagonally on the vehicle body 1, and the pair of drive wheels disposed at the opposite diagonal position are supported. The air cushions 2A and 2B support the remaining eccentric load of the vehicle body and absorb unevenness of the road surface 16, so that the vehicle body 1 can be held extremely stably. In addition,
The entire load of the transported goods 20 placed on the vehicle body 1 is borne by the drive wheels 6, 6 of the pair of wheel devices 3A, 3B, and the pair of air cushions 2A, 2B are borne by the drive wheels 6, 6 of the pair of wheel devices 3A, 3B, regardless of the magnitude of the load. While maintaining the rubber bellows 10 at a constant floating height from the road surface, it always carries a constant load.
.

3B is the spring constant for the car body 1, and then take f・1
If the air cushions 2A, 2B and the wheel device bar 3A change, the effective heights of the air cushions 2A, 2B will change depending on the fluctuation of the carrying load.

The load sharing with 3B changes depending on the spring constant, the floating height of the rubber bellows 10, and the load carrying capacity.

Therefore, the loads on the air cushions 2A and 2B are appropriately set in consideration of the above-mentioned matters, so that appropriate load sharing is given to the wheel devices 3A and 3B and the air cushions 2A and 2B, respectively. As a result, the rubber bellows 10 of the air cushions 2A, 2B can, in principle, stand still and move while receiving a load without contacting the road surface 16. As a result, when a conventional caster wheel receives a load and attempts to move in reverse, the wheel cannot instantaneously turn in a stable direction, resulting in an extremely unstable condition. The unnecessary cornering force that occurs until the vehicle is heading in a stable direction causes the vehicle body to
The non-contact air cushions 2A and 2B as mentioned above can completely avoid the above problems and have no adverse effect on the running direction. The vehicle body 1 can travel on an accurate course by the orientation and drive rotation of the drive wheels 6, 6 of the pair of wheel devices 3A, 3B.

Furthermore, since the wheel systems 3A and 3B are disposed diagonally on the vehicle body 1, all types of traveling can be easily performed by the directional steering and rotational drive of the drive wheels 6.6.

Here, various running patterns will be explained with reference to FIG. First, in FIG. 4(a), the two-wheel device 3A is moved along the arrow in the vertical direction (A indicates the front, and the mouth indicates the rear).

Since each drive wheel 6.6 of 3B is directed, the vehicle body 1 travels straight forward or backward. Next, as shown in FIG. 4(b), when the directions of both wheel devices 3A, 3[3'IJ+drive wheels 6, 6 are different from each other, the intersection point C of the wheel axes of both drive wheels 6, 6 is It turns along the circumference of the center in the clockwise direction indicated by arrow 2 in the figure, or in the opposite counterclockwise direction. However, in this case, the rotational drive speed of both drive wheels 6, 6 is determined by the rotational drive speed of the drive wheels 6, 6 of the wheel devices 3A, 3B shown at the above intersection C) 101 The vehicle body 1 moves laterally in the left-right direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction. Furthermore, in FIG. 4(d), the two-wheel device 3A.

3B drive wheels 6, 6 are aligned on the same axis. In this case, if the driving wheels 6.6 are rotated in the same direction and at the same speed, the vehicle body 1 will be rotated as shown by the arrows 1 to 1 perpendicular to the wheel axis. If the vehicle body 1 travels straight along the road diagonally forward or diagonally backward, and if the rotation directions of both drive wheels 6, 6 are reversed to make them equal speeds, the vehicle body 1 will be centered on its own center point as shown in the figure. By rotating in the directions of arrows N and R, and furthermore, by making the rotational drive speeds of both drive wheels 6 and 6 different in the same state, it is possible to not only make various turns around any point, but also to When the rotation of the drive wheel is stopped, the vehicle starts turning around the stopped drive wheel. Combining these various types of driving makes it possible to move freely on any driving course.

In addition, the air cushions 2A and 2B not only accurately follow all possible movements of the vehicle body 1, but also do not cause any disturbance or other negative effects on the vehicle running, thereby preventing the vehicle body 1 from falling over. The functions that you want to use will work reliably.

Next, the running of the vehicle body 1 is stopped, and the air action 2A,
If the air blowing operation of the air blower 9 of 2B is stopped, the insertion of compressed air into each rubber bellows 10 will be stopped, and the floating ability as an air cushion will be lost. The contact plate 17a at the lower end of a certain stopper 17 touches the road surface 1G via the sliding plate 18.
The vehicle body 1 is able to stably stand still in a slightly tilted state.

In the unlikely event that the air blower ffl+119 has trouble for some reason while the car body 1 is running and the air blower stops (stopping), the rotation of the contact plate 17a at the lower end of the stopper 17 will allow the car to continue running to some extent. The moving plate 18 is made of a material with high wear resistance and a low coefficient of friction.

In addition, the ability to overcome abnormal protrusions on the road surface 16 (Jl, the drive wheels 6, 61 of the wheel devices 3A, 3B is comparable to that of a general 11'i wheel, the air cushions 2A, 2B are capable of overcoming the sliding plate 18 of the stopper 17 and the road surface 16). This is determined by the range of the gap.For this reason, we devised the shape of a part of the stopper 1 and installed caster wheels (not shown) that are in a floating state during normal driving in place of the stopper. The ability to overcome abnormal protrusions may be improved.

5 and 6 show other different embodiments of the present invention. First, in the case of FIG. 5, a wheel device 3A similar to the above is installed at a front and rear position on the right-hand side of the lower part of the vehicle body 1.
, 3B are arranged, and a large air cushion 2C is provided at the center position near the other side opposite to the air cushion 2C. The device 3A, 3B is configured with small air cushions 2D, 2E arranged in front and back positions near the other side on the left side opposite to the devices 3A, 3B. In such a configuration, air cushion 2
C or 2D, 2E is the wheel device 3A.

The air cushions 2C, 2D, and 2E have the ability to maintain levitation even under the maximum load, since the load on the left side of the vehicle body 1 will be borne by one point of the three-point support for 3B. Moreover, the floating height of the air cushion changes depending on the load, which affects the maintenance of the levelness of the vehicle body 1 to some extent, but other than that, the effect is functionally exactly the same as that of the above-mentioned embodiment. You will be able to demonstrate your abilities.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, the present invention provides an automatic traveling conveyance vehicle that travels under automatic or remote control or the like to convey transported goods. 1 wheel device and an air cushion that blows out compressed air on the lower side and prevents the vehicle from falling over without contacting the road surface.
It is possible to take advantage of the completely non-directional effect of the arc traction on the road surface, and use a pair of wheels to accurately and easily drive in any direction. It has an optimal structure as a traveling transport vehicle.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Fig. 1 is a schematic plan view showing one embodiment of the present invention;
3 is a sectional view of the air cushion part in the same embodiment, and FIG. 5 and 6 are schematic plan views showing other different embodiments of the present invention. 1... Vehicle body 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E... Air cushion 3A, 3B...Wheel device 4...Swivel base 5...Vertical axis 6...Drive wheel 7...Drive motor 8...Base for installation 8a...Bottom plate
9...Blower 10...Rubber bellows 10a...
Small hole 11... Receiving plate 11a... Ventilation port 12.1
5... Bellows presser 13... Support tube 14... Seat plate 16... Road surface 17... Stopper 17a...
・Block plate 18...Sliding plate 19...Bottle for loading/unloading/exit]・20...Products to be transported. Applicant's agent Patent attorney Takehiko Suzue Figure 3 Figure 5 Figure 6

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) Automatically controlled or remotely controlled, etc. In an automatic traveling conveyance vehicle that travels and transports transported goods, a pair of wheel devices are provided at the bottom of the vehicle body that can control the direction of the wheels, the rotational drive direction, and the rotational speed; An automatic traveling guided vehicle comprising: an air cushion which prevents the vehicle body from overturning without contacting the road surface while blowing compressed air downward. (2) The pair of wheel devices are disposed at diagonal positions below the vehicle body, and an air cushion is disposed at the opposite diagonal position. self-driving transport vehicle. (3) The pair of wheel devices are arranged near one side of the lower part of the vehicle body, front, rear, left, or right, and an air cushion is provided near the other side opposite to this. The self-driving 1j guided vehicle described in item 1.