Wafer center finding with kalman filter

• Main Authors: KILEY CHRISTOPHER C, FOGEL PAUL E, VAN DER MEULEN PETER, BUZAN FORREST T
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 21.01.2014
• Subjects: BASIC ELECTRIC ELEMENTS; CALCULATING; COMPUTING; CONTROL OR REGULATING SYSTEMS IN GENERAL; CONTROLLING; CONVEYING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC SOLID STATE DEVICES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; ELECTRICITY; FUNCTIONAL ELEMENTS OF SUCH SYSTEMS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; HANDLING RECORD CARRIERS; HANDLING THIN OR FILAMENTARY MATERIAL; MONITORING OR TESTING ARRANGEMENTS FOR SUCH SYSTEMS ORELEMENTS; PACKING; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICS; PNEUMATIC TUBE CONVEYORS; PRESENTATION OF DATA; RECOGNITION OF DATA; RECORD CARRIERS; REGULATING; SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES; SHOP CONVEYOR SYSTEMS; STORING; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ARTCOLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS; TRANSPORT OR STORAGE DEVICES, e.g. CONVEYORS FOR LOADING ORTIPPING; TRANSPORTING

A device is provided having a robotic arm for handling a wafer, the robotic arm including one or more encoders that provide encoder data identifying a position of one or more components of the robotic arm. The device also having a processor adapted to apply an extended Kalman Filter to the encoder data to estimate a position of the wafer.