A wafer-transfer robot spends its whole life doing two things: setting a substrate down and picking it back up. Kawasaki Jukogyo (Kawasaki Heavy Industries) was granted a patent this week that takes those two motions and reduces each to a single instruction, switch between two taught points without stopping. The hero record, US12662332B2, "Robot control device, robot, and method of controlling the robot," issued June 23, 2026. Its title points, vaguely, at a control device; claim 1 points at something far more specific. The invention the independent claim fences off is not the arm and not the end effector. It is a way of teaching place-and-hold as a state switch and then running that switch without ever decelerating to a stop.

Read claim 1 and the structure is precise. The robot has a robotic arm with at least one joint axis and an end effector at the tip that holds a substrate. Two states are defined by two taught points. When the end effector sits at a first teaching point above the installation position, the substrate is held and not yet placed, the first state. When it sits at a second teaching point below the installation position, the end effector no longer holds the substrate and the substrate rests at the install position, the second state. The control device switches between those states by moving the end effector from one teaching point to the other. The limitation that gives the claim its edge is the last one: the processor controls the robot to perform that operation without stopping the end effector. The drop-off, or the pick-up, happens as the arm sweeps through, not as a halt-place-resume sequence.

control the robot to switch between the first state and the second state by performing an operation moving the end effector from either one of the first teaching point and the second teaching point to the other one of the first teaching point and the second teaching point; and control the robot to perform the operation without stopping the end effector.— Robot control device, robot, and method of controlling the robot, US12662332B2

Why teach it as a state switch instead of a position command? The background section names the problem the claim is answering. Conventional substrate-transfer control, the patent says, generally determines whether the end effector has passed the install position before completing the transfer, and that determination keeps the handoff from being prompt. The granted claims design that decision out. Claim 1's dependent siblings make the intent explicit: claim 2 recites performing the operation without decelerating the end effector at or near the install position, and claim 12 recites the end effector passing the install position at maximum speed. The substrate is released or captured as the arm flies through a taught corridor at full speed, with no pass-detection check to wait on. The mechanical enabler appears in claim 5, a two-pronged, Y-shaped end effector whose tip-end parts straddle the install position so the plate carrying the wafer passes between the prongs as the effector sweeps past, the simple geometry that lets a non-stop pass actually deposit or lift the substrate.

Where the granted claim lands in the patent landscape

The classification matches the claim. The record's main CPC is B25J 9/1664, the subgroup for program-controlled manipulators where control is by means of a controller programmed for a specific motion sequence, with sub-references covering the program structure itself. That is the right shelf for this invention: the patentable substance here is the controller's instruction set, the taught two-point state switch executed without a stop, rather than any actuator or gripper mechanism. B25J is the broad CPC class for manipulators and industrial robots, and the B25J 9 range, where arm control, programming, and trajectory live, is the dense, heavily filed neighborhood that defines the manipulator-control estate. Within it, B25J 9/1664 is the program-control corner this patent occupies, distinct from the joint-mechanics and end-effector-structure subgroups elsewhere in the class.

The record carries other claim-supported detail that situates it firmly in semiconductor wafer handling rather than general pick-and-place. Claim 7 recites a horizontal articulated (SCARA-style) robot; claim 13 recites a pedestal with an elevating shaft and the arm at its upper end; claims 17 and 19 recite the end effector holding the substrate by pinching or by suction; and claim 18 recites the install position being the upper surface of a turntable of a pre-aligner, the rotational-alignment station a wafer visits before processing. The description confirms the lineage: the granted patent is a continuation of an application filed February 2022, itself off a PCT filing claiming priority to a Japanese application from August 2019. This is a matured, prosecuted-through-to-grant member of a family Kawasaki has been carrying for years, not a fresh disclosure.

A companion grant on correctable automatic operation

Kawasaki's grant record around control logic does not stop at teaching points. A related issued patent, US12661782B2, "Control device, control system, robot system and controlling method," is directed to a different control problem: letting a human correct a robot's automatic operation on the fly and persisting the correction. Its claim architecture, as the record describes it, has a memory storing operational information that drives an automatic work cycle, a processing part that accepts manipulational information from a handheld manipulating device to correct the running operation, and a step that stores the corrected operation back as the new stored operational information, so the manual fix becomes the next cycle's automatic behavior. Where US12662332B2 is about executing a taught motion without interruption, US12661782B2 is about editing a taught motion while it runs and committing the edit. Read together, the two granted records map two complementary sides of the same teaching-and-control problem: how a transfer motion is taught and run without stopping, and how a running motion is corrected and re-taught.

What a granted claim establishes, and what it does not

The status of the hero record is the point a claims reading has to keep in front. US12662332B2 is an issued, granted patent, which is why it resolves to a granted-patent record rather than a publications record. Grant means the independent claim has cleared examination and now defines enforceable scope as written, not merely disclosed scope. Claim 1, as granted, is directed to a control device that switches between a hold state and a release state by moving between two taught points and performs that move without stopping the end effector. That is the fence as it now stands. Reading the granted claim tells you what Kawasaki has secured and how it is classified; it does not tell you how the claim will fare against prior art it has not been tested on, and this brief makes no judgment on the scope, breadth, or value of any claim.

For an IP reader tracking the manipulator-control estate, the value of this grant is in its specificity. The title says control device; claim 1 says a no-stop teaching-point state switch. The classification says B25J 9/1664 program control; the dependent claims say SCARA arm, elevating shaft, pinch-or-suction end effector, pre-aligner turntable, full-speed pass between Y-shaped prongs. One assignee, one grant date, a multi-year continuation lineage, and a companion grant on correctable automatic operation, together a coherent, now-enforceable slice of the wafer-transfer control landscape that reads as control logic first and hardware second.