Robotic Unloading

Mechanical Engineering, Jan 2007 by Thilmany, Jean

ROBOTS RUNNING AMOK and destroying property may be a staple of science fiction films, but they aren't welcome in factories, warehouses, or any other places where automatic guided vehicle forklifts-essentially, robot forklifts-are used.

Now Transbotics, a Charlotte, N.C., manufacturer of those forklifts, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., are working together on sensors to help robot forklifts negotiate obstacles and home in on warehouse pallets. With the sensors, robot forklifts could maneuver, load and unload pallets, check out the space remaining in a truck they're unloading, and track the number of pallets that still need handling, according to a statement from NIST.

The experimental system is composed of two optical devices and software. One optical device measures the properties of scattered laser light to get information on objects in the way of the forklift, NIST said. The second device essentially pans the scene and then reconstructs it in colored images that indicate proximity to an object. That device can also return information as a 3-D data-point cloud.

Software sends device data-like the colors or point-cloud info-to the robot forklift's control center for interpretation by software there.