A third of supply chain pros use robotics, but cost and ROI remain barriers

September 24, 2019

Source: Supply Chain Dive / by Matt Leonard Dive Brief: About 32% of supply chain professionals say they are actively using robotics and automation, according to this year’s MHI Annual Industry Report. This number has gone relatively unchanged since 2016 when 35% of respondents said they were actively using robotics and automation, but anecdotal evidence and market value forecasts show warehouse robotics growing as companies seek labor savings at a time …Read More

TECHNICAL GUEST POST: Reactive grasping using tactile sensors (Fraunhofer-IFF)

September 18, 2019

Industrial bin-picking applications usually involve a vision system. These systems identify and localize the objects to be picked, and also often suggest an optimal picking strategy. In such situations, the robot moves from its original position to the defined grasp position of the object inside the bin (as defined by the vision system), grasps the object, and moves it to the final placing position. However this whole process raises some …Read More

A dataset of daily interactive manipulation (ABSTRACT)

September 17, 2019

Source: The International Journal of Robotics Research Authors: Yongqiang Huang, Yu Sun Publication: First published May 13, 2019 Robots that succeed in factories may struggle to complete even the simplest daily task that humans take for granted, because the change of environment makes the task exceedingly difficult. Aiming to teach robots to perform daily interactive manipulation in a changing environment using human demonstrations, we collected our own data of interactive …Read More

TECHNICAL GUEST POST: Human-aware motion planning (CNR-STIIMA)

September 3, 2019

What does human-aware motion planning mean? In human-robot collaborative cells, one of the main problems is represented by the robot’s stopping or slowing down due to the human presence. The origin of this problem is the lack of awareness of the robot with respect to the human motions. In fact, motion planners take care of the current human position as a mere obstacle or they do not take care of …Read More

TECHNICAL GUEST POST: Multifunctional gripper (Mondragon Assembly)

August 27, 2019

What technologies are necessary to optimize the use of a multifunctional gripper? The use of bin-picking applications is increasing in the industry. Generally speaking, these applications allow to carry out operations of picking up different products from a box, previously chosen through a vision system. When picking different products, they can be different in shape, weight and form. To ensure that an object is picked up, a technology capable of …Read More

Library of actions: Implementing a generic robot execution framework by using manipulation action semantics (ABSTRACT)

August 13, 2019

Source: The International Journal of Robotics Research Authors: Mohamad Javad Aein, Eren Erdal Aksoy, Florentin Wörgötter Publication: First published May 29, 2019 When a robot has to imitate an observed action sequence, it must first understand the inherent characteristic features of the individual actions. Such features need to reflect the semantics of the action with a high degree of invariance between different demonstrations of the same action. At the same …Read More

Boston Dynamics Enters Warehouse Robots Market, Acquires Kinema Systems

July 30, 2019

Source: Spectrum IEEE / by Erico Guizzo The company, famous for agile machines like Atlas and Spot, wants to unleash robots in the warehouse If you haven’t seen the latest Boston Dynamics video, released last week, it shows an upgraded version of the company’s Handle robot moving boxes in a warehouse. Handle is a mobile manipulator that integrates both legs and wheels, and the new version features a swinging “tail” that serves as a …Read More

TECHNICAL GUEST POST: Object selection and detection (IK4-TEKNIKER)

July 24, 2019

Which approach are you using for object selection and detection within the PICK-PLACE project? Due to the large number of references that the system needs to be able to cope with, we are using a deep learning based approach for object identification, segmentation and grasping point selection. There are different steps involved in order to generate a deep learning model. First, a dataset with images of different objects needs to …Read More

Sensor-packed glove learns signatures of the human grasp (ABSTRACT)

July 17, 2019

Source: Science Daily Wearing a sensor-packed glove while handling a variety of objects, MIT researchers have compiled a massive dataset that enables an AI system to recognize objects through touch alone. The information could be leveraged to help robots identify and manipulate objects, and may aid in prosthetics design.

Project milestone: human-robot collaboration experiments

July 2, 2019

When are operators annoyed by the presence of a collaborative robot? When do they consider the robot as an effective collaborator? These questions are fundamental in a human-robot collaboration scenario. Task 1.2 of the PICK-PLACE project analyzes the role of motion-planner behavior on the operator’s feelings. An experimental campaign has been used to understand how humans are affected in their jobs by the presence of a robot. The results have been …Read More

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