Autonomous Robots for Trailer Unloading

2018年，加拿大零售业的销售额超过3750亿美元，超过11.5%的加拿大劳动力为该行业做出了贡献[加拿大零售业]。零售业是连接制造商和加拿大家庭的供应链中的关键一环。然而，随着零售商品需求的增加，企业配送中心不堪重负，正寻求将一些乏味和耗时的任务自动化，如大型拖车的卸货。从拖车上卸下包装物品是目前许多配送中心运作中的一个瓶颈，因为这需要工人在无数个小时内手动执行卸货、分拣和码垛包裹这一艰巨的体力任务。包裹通常包装严密，大小和重量各不相同。该项目旨在设计一个机器人系统，用于从我们合作的行业配送设施的大型拖车上自动卸载混合包裹。将解决的开放技术挑战范围从识别和操作各种大小、形状和重量不等的不同包裹的能力，到高效和可靠地将它们从可能杂乱的布置中卸载到适当的托盘上。拟议的系统将包括一个安装在移动平台上的机器人操作臂，以及必要的感知系统，以在拖车内自主导航，并以优化的方式识别、取回和托盘包裹。在该项目中开发的独特的自主机器人系统将切实提高拖车卸车过程的效率和安全性，同时创造对熟练工作的需求。

In 2018, the retail industry in Canada had over $375 billion in sales, with over 11.5% of Canada's workforce contributing to this sector [Retail Sales of Canada]. Retail is the critical link in the supply chain that connects manufacturers to Canadian households. However, with increasing demand for retail goods, corporate distribution centres are overwhelmed and are looking to automate some of the tedious and time-consuming tasks such as the unloading of large trailers. The unloading of packaged items from trailers is a current bottleneck in the operations of many distribution centres as it requires workers to perform the physically arduous task of unloading, sorting, and palletizing packages manually over countless hours. The packages are often tightly packed and of assorted sizes and weights. This project seeks to design a robotic system for the autonomous unloading of mixed packages from large trailers at our partner industry distribution facilities. The open technical challenges that will be addressed range from the ability to identify and manipulate a variety of different packages ranging in size, shape and weight, to efficiently and reliably unloading them from a potentially cluttered arrangement onto their appropriate pallets. The proposed system will comprise a mobile-platform-mounted robotic manipulator arm with the necessary perception system to autonomously navigate within a trailer, and identify, retrieve and palletize packages in an optimized manner. The unique autonomous robotic system developed within this project will tangibly increase the efficiency and safety of the trailer unloading process, while creating a demand for skilled jobs.