DEVICE FOR DETECTION OF SUBSTRATE IN SUBSTRATE CONTAINER, SUBSTRATE CARRYING-IN/CARRYING-OUT DEVICE HAVING THE DETECTION DEVICE, AND SUBSTRATE TREATMENT DEVICE HAVING THE CARRYING-IN/CARRYING-OUT DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To detect the presence of substrates in the container even if obstacles exist around a substrate container, by a method wherein the presence of the substrates in the substrate container is photographed and the photographed image information is analyzed to detect the presence of the substrates in the substrate container. ;SOLUTION: A substrate detection device 2 which detects the presence of substrates W in a substrate container 1 is composed of a CCD camera 3, an image memory 4, an image analysis unit 5, etc. The presence in the substrate container 1 is photographed by the CCD camera 3 which is located at a predetermined photographing position and stored in the image memory 4. The image analysis unit 5 consisting of a CPU analyzes the concentration data, etc., of an image stored in the image memory 4 to detect the presence of the substrates W which is stored in a detection result memory 6. As the presence can be detected by photographing the presence of the substrates W in the substrate container 1 from a distant position, it is not necessary to move a photosensor, etc., near the substrates W, so that the substrates W can be protected from contamination during the detection.;COPYRIGHT: (C)1998,JPO