Robots have been working in factories for many years. But given the related safety concerns to the tasks they perform, most operate inside cages or behind safety glass to limit or prevent interaction with humans.
In warehouse operations, where goods are continuously sorted and moved, robots can be neither caged nor stationary. And while large corporations like Amazon have already incorporated robots into their warehouses, they are highly customized and costly systems where robots are designed to work within one facility on predefined grids or well-defined pathways under the guidance of specific, centralized programming that carefully directs their activity.
"For robots to be most useful in a warehouse, they will need to be smart enough to deploy in any facility easily and quickly; able to train themselves to navigate in new dynamic environments; and most importantly, be able to safely work with humans, as well as sizeable fleets of other robots," said Ding Zhao, the principal investigator and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.