31–40 of 83 posts
Also --- I couldn't see any obvious sensors. What sensors are you using to perceive the bag? I am imagining some kind of RGB-D sensor like a Kinect (or its successors like the Orbbec).
The suction "cup" seems to be doing a good job, but I don't think bags are made to be handled that way. Did you alternate test with some kind of a grabber (like the claw machine, but actually effective)? It would make the grasp selection problem much more tractable imo, since all bags have at least one "grasp point" built in. In teleoperated mode, I'm guessing you're using the captured data to train the autonomous mo…
The teleop data is really useful for training data indeed, and lets us collect data on current failure points (e.g. with suction, just how far can we tilt this fabric bag before it peels away, etc). We're not going full behavior-cloned end-to-end for a lot of reasons (sample complexity, safety, adaptability, etc), but we do a lot of learning in specific parts of the system (particularly around grasping and placement).
The robot is indeed beefy, as many robots rated for 50kg applications are (check them out online). We've accidentally stress tested this unit way beyond 50kg without a hiccup, so we're very interested in figuring out what the right-size unit is for our application. There are a few other great aspects to this unit - it's a 7-DOF arm + 1 more DOF for the linear rail, so we have two extra degrees of freedom to play with for collision avoidance during planning.
Using a vacuum to pick up baggage is a very interesting choice. I wonder how it would fare with extremely uneven surfaces or even porous ones. Also --- I couldn't see any obvious sensors. What sensors are you using to perceive the bag? I am imagining some kind of RGB-D sensor like a Kinect (or its successors like the Orbbec).
For these videos we have lidars and two Intel Realsense depth cameras mounted to the safety cage and on a wall. We're working on moving as many sensor on-robot as possible in the near future to aid with deployability.
Are most suitcases designed to bear its fully loaded weight just by sucking on one surface?
Solid question and something we think about a lot! Worst case is a weak zipper or similar. We're bringing a new gripper online which is more multimodal - some mechanical grasping, some suction, and the ability to choose what you use. We're moving away from pure suction partly for this reason and partly for textiles. Suction is great though, and ~75% of bags checked through the US are hardshells, so it's something we'…
I've heard about you guys before. Nice application! What are you using for teleop/remote-monitoring? Did you build that yourself?
Teleop and monitoring are systems that we've built ourselves and are pretty happy with. Since we use MuJoCo for simulation/visualization and some kinematics subroutines, to visualize, I just keep the MuJoCo GL context open after rendering and then throw all of our sensor data into it - it's very performant and low latency! We've since introduced a message-bus layer that makes it possible to do it all over the interne…
I wrote this blog post on that topic a while back after having seen various approaches robotics companies take and their shortcomings: https://transitiverobotics.com/blog/streaming-video-from-rob...
Was on a plane a few days ago watching someone do this out the window 10 yards away. - Seemed like the baggage handler was required to do a very fast cycle of . Automation seems helpful, and certainly it’s hard labor. - This was also a young woman, in presumably a safe union job, working in a very pricey city (one of the mountain west towns that exploded). Adios union job hello robots. Tricky ethics! Outside of picki…
Generally, regulators seem to be moving in this direction as well. The EU has introduced new regulations on the total amount of weight someone can move in a shift, and the Dutch government has mandated that baggage handling move away from manual processes like this in the near future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solid question and something we think about a lot! Worst case is a weak zipper or similar. We're bringing a new gripper online which is more multimodal - some mechanical grasping, some suction, and the ability to choose what you use. We're moving away from pure suction partly for this reason and partly for textiles. Suction is great though, and ~75% of bags checked through the US are hardshells, so it's something we'…
How about a forklift like handling ?
There have been some neat attempts with short conveyor belts as end effector tools [1]! Generally these systems rely on being able to rearchitect a significant amount of the process (building a controllable conveyor belt or rearchitecting part of the bag-room), and we're focused on dropping into existing processes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Teleop and monitoring are systems that we've built ourselves and are pretty happy with. Since we use MuJoCo for simulation/visualization and some kinematics subroutines, to visualize, I just keep the MuJoCo GL context open after rendering and then throw all of our sensor data into it - it's very performant and low latency! We've since introduced a message-bus layer that makes it possible to do it all over the interne…
> to do it all over the internet, but adds the associated serialization and transport latency. I wrote this blog post on that topic a while back after having seen various approaches robotics companies take and their shortcomings: https://transitiverobotics.com/blog/streaming-video-from-rob...
Was on a plane a few days ago watching someone do this out the window 10 yards away. - Seemed like the baggage handler was required to do a very fast cycle of . Automation seems helpful, and certainly it’s hard labor. - This was also a young woman, in presumably a safe union job, working in a very pricey city (one of the mountain west towns that exploded). Adios union job hello robots. Tricky ethics! Outside of picki…
We're really focused on health and safety aspects of this job - in a repetitive stress sense, these jobs are much more dangerous than many people imagine they would be and people end up with lifelong injuries. Generally, regulators seem to be moving in this direction as well. The EU has introduced new regulations on the total amount of weight someone can move in a shift, and the Dutch government has mandated that bag…
The regulator focus seems like it'd reduce the max allowed weight of a checked bag, not automate the baggage handler handing the checked bag. So, I don't see the similarity between the regulatory push and your product? Edit - to clarify, beyond what Dutch regulators say about Dutch markets, which are a very small subset of "regulator focus" internationally.