Japan Tobacco Inc.

Ransburg Industrial Finishing K.k.

Hitachi, Ltd.

Takao Murakami

Kenta Takahashi

Eiji Saito

Norikuni Miyaoka

Susumu Sugawa

An automatically guided vehicle includes a single-wheel unit including a first wheel, a paired-wheel unit including second and third wheels, a sensor for detecting a track, a control unit, etc. The first and second wheels are drive wheels that are rotated by motors, individually, while the third wheel is an idler wheel. The control unit executes an angle steering mode during a forward movement or the like and a speed difference steering mode during a sidewise or slantwise movement. In the angle steering mode, the steering angle of that wheel unit, out of the single- and paired-wheel units, which is situated on the rear side in the moving direction is fixed, and the steering angle of the wheel unit on the front side is controlled. In the speed difference steering mode, the guided vehicle is steered along the track by differentiating the respective rotational speeds of the first and second wheels with the respective steering angles of the individual wheels fixed. The control unit selects the speed difference steering mode when the steering angles are set at values such that the first and second wheels are situated on the opposite sides with respect to a line segment in the steering direction passing through the center of gravity of the guided vehicle.

Automatically guided vehicle

An outer tube 5 is integrally rotated with a rotating disk 17. A powder supply passage 16 for supply of powder particles is formed between an inner tube 15 and the outer tube 5. A lower end of the inner tube 15 is secured to a sub-disk 23, and a distributing passage 25 is formed as a space between the sub-disk 23 and the rotating disk 17. Air including powder particles introduced into a separation passage 41 is separated into air and powder in the separation passage 41, and the particles are fed to the distributing passage 25 through the powder supply passage 16. The powder particles falling in the powder supply passage 16 undergo a swirling motion in accordance with the rotation of the outer tube 5, and owing to the swirling motion, the powder particles in the powder supply passage 16 are distributed uniformly in the circumferential direction.

Disk-type electrostatic powder coating method and an apparatus therefor

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Takao Murakami