Position indicating apparatus for crane ways, overhead conveyors, and the like
First Claim
1. Apparatus for determining a position of a vehicle travelling along defined paths, such as crane ways and overhead conveyors, which have at least one running rail along which said vehicle travels, comprising:
- a code carrier located along a travel path direction of said vehicle and extending along said direction, on which code carrier a plurality of code marks are formed;
code reader means for reading said code marks, said code carrier and said code reader means being movable relative to one another along said travel path direction;
an evaluation means coupled to the code reader means for evaluating the code marks read by said code reader means;
wherein said plurality of code marks are grouped into blocks, with each of said blocks comprising more than one code mark that succeed one another in sequence;
means for assigning an identification to each of said blocks;
auxiliary code reader means for detecting said assigned block identification; and
said evaluation means receiving the output of said auxiliary code reader means to determine whether the output of said code reader means corresponds to only code marks of one of said blocks, and to determine the vehicle position based on the detected block identification and the evaluated code marks.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A position indicating apparatus for crane ways and overhead conveyors and the like includes a code carrier (11), which carries multi-value code marks (18) in one track along its length. The code marks (18) are combined into blocks (17), with which a block identification (22) is associated. Cooperating with the code carrier (11) and the block identification (22) are a code reader (12) and an auxiliary reader (24), respectively. Along the travel path, the code carrier (11) and the code reader (12) are disposed counter to one another. To enable increasing the length of the addressable travel paths without losing positional accuracy, or without having to increase the number of code marks (18) in one code word (35), a block identification (22) is associated with the blocks (17). From the block identification (22), an auxiliary reader (24) can recognize whether the code reader (12) is reading only code marks (18) from one block (17). In this way, the travel path can be divided into important zones (27), in which the accurate position of the vehicle must be known, and to which blocks (17) must therefore be assigned, and unimportant zones (28), which are merely gaps (19) between blocks that connect the important zones (27) to one another.
39 Citations
36 Claims
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1. Apparatus for determining a position of a vehicle travelling along defined paths, such as crane ways and overhead conveyors, which have at least one running rail along which said vehicle travels, comprising:
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a code carrier located along a travel path direction of said vehicle and extending along said direction, on which code carrier a plurality of code marks are formed; code reader means for reading said code marks, said code carrier and said code reader means being movable relative to one another along said travel path direction; an evaluation means coupled to the code reader means for evaluating the code marks read by said code reader means; wherein said plurality of code marks are grouped into blocks, with each of said blocks comprising more than one code mark that succeed one another in sequence; means for assigning an identification to each of said blocks; auxiliary code reader means for detecting said assigned block identification; and said evaluation means receiving the output of said auxiliary code reader means to determine whether the output of said code reader means corresponds to only code marks of one of said blocks, and to determine the vehicle position based on the detected block identification and the evaluated code marks. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
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Specification