Parcel robot

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A parcel robot is an industrial robot system for unloading loose, standardized piece goods from containers and swap bodies . It consists of a 3D - laser scanner , an automatic handling system , a chassis, a telescopic conveyor and a replaceable gripper system .

Components

The robot system stands on a steerable chassis without its own drive. It is coupled to the front of a telescopic conveyor belt that is extended electrically and pushes the chassis and robot into the container.

A 3D laser scanner scans the package layers inside the container. He works more robust than z. B. a stereo video camera, because it does not react to external light and shadow and provides depth information without time-consuming calculations. The scan data is transferred to a computer; A control and image processing software specially developed by EADS Space Transportation for this purpose determines possible gripping positions from this data and weights them.

The weighting takes into account that package stacks are removed as sensibly as possible, that is, that the remaining package stack remains stable and collisions with other packages (or the environment) are avoided.

For the most favorable gripping position, the software calculates a collision-free path (there and back) and transfers a tight series of path points to the robot controller, which it then travels.

The software also controls the telescopic conveyor; if the packages are outside the robot work area, the robot and platform are tracked.

The grippers are able to pick up cubic, loose, standardized packages of various sizes with a weight of up to 31.5 kilograms.

History of origin

In the "Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH" (BIBA) experiments began in 2002 with an unloading system that used commercially available 6-axis robots instead of the special parcel robot . Since these systems had to turn 180 ° to place the package on the conveyor belt, a lot of time was lost. The early, close and application-oriented cooperation with industrial partners resulted in an optimized hybrid robot system that combines elements of a gantry robot and a SCARA robot in a relatively short time . The development was led by Deutsche Post DHL Group and a sponsorship family was registered in cooperation with the University of Bremen and the BIBA. All rights to the system are held by the Deutsche Post DHL Group.

The robot system was presented to the public in 2006 and was initially manufactured under license by ThyssenKrupp Systemengineering. Robotics-logistics-solutions (rls) GmbH has been the license holder of the system since 2014. In 2015, the system was further developed with a license from rls GmbH by Güdel Group AG in Switzerland.

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