Abstract
Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors:“BACKGROUND ART“Conventionally, a robot which transfers a substrate is used. As one example of such a robot, a substratetransfer device disclosed in Patent Document 1 is know n. According to this substrate transfer device,in a passing/receiving operation of a substrate between an indexer robot and a center robot, an indexerupper ha nd which is empty and an indexer lower hand on which an unprocessed substrate is placed startmoving forward so that the indexer upper hand precedes the lower h and. The indexer upper hand reachesa passing/receiving position earlier and rec eives a processed substrate, and the indexer lower hand thenreaches the passing /receiving position. Then, the indexer upper hand starts moving rearward, and th eindexer lower hand passes the unprocessed substrate and starts moving rearward . Then, the indexer lowerhand moves rearward at high speed so as to catch up wi th the indexer upper hand, and the both handsare reoriented toward their initia l positions. By such a configuration, a substrate transferring time can bereduc ed as compared with a device in which an indexer upper hand and an indexer lower hand alternatelypass an unprocessed substrate and receive a processed substrat e. Moreover, since the indexer upper handis empty when it reaches the substrate passing/receiving position earlier, the substrate will not fall off evenif the indexer upper hand reaches the substrate passing/receiving position at the high advancing speed.”
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