No More Heavy Lifting: Robotic Solutions to the Container Unloading Problem

Todor Stoyanov, Narunas Vaskevicius, Christian A. Mueller, Tobias Fromm, Robert Krug, Vinicio Tincani, Rasoul Mojtahedzadeh, Stefan Kunaschk, Rafael Mortensen Ernits, Daniel R. Canelhas, Manuel Bonilla, Soren Schwertfeger, Marco Bonini, Harry Halfar, Kaustubh Pathak, Mortiz Rohde, Gualtiero Fantoni, Antonio Bicchi, Andreas Birk, Achim J. LilienthalWolfgang Echelmeyer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

41 Scopus citations

Abstract

This article discusses the scientifically and industrially important problem of automating the process of unloading goods from standard shipping containers. We outline some of the challenges barring further adoption of robotic solutions to this problem, ranging from handling a vast variety of shapes, sizes, weights, appearances, and packing arrangements of the goods, through hard demands on unloading speed and reliability, to ensuring that fragile goods are not damaged. We propose a modular and reconfigurable software framework in an attempt to efficiently address some of these challenges. We also outline the general framework design and the basic functionality of the core modules developed. We present two instantiations of the software system on two different fully integrated demonstrators: (1) coping with an industrial scenario, i.e., the automated unloading of coffee sacks with an already economically interesting performance; and (2) a scenario used to demonstrate the capabilities of our scientific and technological developments in the context of medium- to long-term prospects of automation in logistics. We performed evaluations that allowed us to summarize several important lessons learned and to identify future directions of research on autonomous robots for the handling of goods in logistics applications.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7553531
Pages (from-to)94-106
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine
Volume23
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2016
Externally publishedYes

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