Towards autonomous retail stocking and picking : methods enabling robust vacuum-based robotic manipulation in densely packed environments

Kmecl, Peter (author), Munih, Marko (author), Podobnik, Janez (author)

With the advent of robotics and artificial intelligence, the potential for automating tasks within human-centric environments has increased significantly. This is particularly relevant in the retail sector where the demand for efficient operations and the shortage of labor drive the need for rapid advancements in robot-based technologies. Densely packed retail shelves pose unique challenges for robotic manipulation and detection due to limited space and diverse object shapes. Vacuum-based grasping technologies offer a promising solution but face challenges with object shape adaptability. The study proposes a framework for robotic grasping in retail environments, an adaptive vacuum-based grasping solution, and a new evaluation metric—termed grasp shear force resilience—for measuring the effectiveness and stability of the grasp during manipulation. The metric provides insights into how retail objects behave under different manipulation scenarios, allowing for better assessment and optimization of robotic grasping performance. The study’s findings demonstrate the adaptive suction cups’ ability to successfully handle a wide range of object shapes and sizes, which, in some cases, overcome commercially available solutions, particularly in adaptability. Additionally, the grasp shear force resilience metric highlights the effects of the manipulation process, such as in shear force and shake, on the manipulated object. This offers insights into its interaction with different vacuum cup grasping solutions in retail picking and restocking scenarios.

• Language: English
• Keywords: service robotics, retail automation, grasping, dense object detection, vacuum actuators, knowledge representation
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: 21 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 24, iss. 20, art. 6687
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-164593
• UDC: 007.52
• ISSN on article: 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s24206687
• COBISS.SI-ID: 213629443
• Publication date in RUL: 04.11.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Sensors
• Shortened title: Sensors
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 1424-8220
• COBISS.SI-ID: 10176278

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: servisna robotika, trgovinska avtomatizacija, prijemanje, zaznavanje gosto porazdeljenih objektov, vakuumski aktuatorji, predstavitev znanja

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P2-0228
• Name: Analiza in sinteza gibanja pri človeku in stroju