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January 18, 2019 05:28 pm

Berkeley's Two-Armed Robot Hints at a New Future For Warehouses

Pick up a glass of water, lift a fork: you automatically figure out the best way to grasp each object. Now researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a robot that makes similar calculation, choosing on the fly whether to grab an object with pincers or lift it with a suction cup. From a report: Berkeley's two-armed robot, seen in this video clip [GIF file], first considers the contents of a bin and calculates each arm's probability of picking up an object. Its suction cup is good at grabbing smooth, flat objects like boxes, but bad at porous surfaces like on a stuffed animal. The pincers, on the other hand, are best with small, odd-shaped items. The system learned its pick-up prowess not from actual practice, but from millions of simulated grasps on more than 1,600 3D objects. In every simulation, small details were randomized, which taught the robot to deal with real-world uncertainty. The bot can pick up objects 95% of the time, at about 300 successful pickups per hour, its creators write in a paper published this week in Science Robotics. Warehouse robots that can move around merchandise are highly sought after. Amazon is reportedly working on its own "picker" robots, as are several robotics companies.

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