Here is a robotic system that can help with warehouse sorting, picking, and clearing tasks. MIT and Princeton University engineers have developed this pick & place system with a robotic arm, custom gripper and suction cup. The object-agnostic grasping algorithm allows the robot to assess random objects and determine the best way to handle them.
Here is how it works:
Once it has successfully grasped an item, the robot lifts it out from the bin. A set of cameras then takes images of the object from various angles, and with the help of a new image-matching algorithm the robot can compare the images of the picked object with a library of other images to find the closest match. In this way, the robot identifies the object, then stows it away in a separate bin.
The researchers are planning to use tactile sensors and other tech to improve the robot’s speed and reactivity.
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