Artificial intelligence can bring more intelligent control systems to industrial robots.

At present, online shopping has become the norm, all kinds of e-commerce has flourished, and the number of packages under the shopping carnival is amazing. According to the monitoring data of the State Post Bureau, as of June 24, 2023, the national express delivery volume this year has reached 60 billion pieces, 172 days ahead of the 60 billion pieces in 2019, and 34 days ahead of 2022.

A wide variety of different shapes of items gathered together, behind the scenes are thousands of staff sorting, packaging, handling and other work, the warehouse of the busy scene can be imagined.

Can we use the power of technology to ease some of the burden on people? The answer is yes. For example, the AGV car, called the “warehouse handling efficiency artifact”, can replace manual rapid handling of goods and is widely used in the field of intelligent warehousing.

51304511-200

51304511-200

The robot handling system of Shanghai Siemens Switch Co., LTD. (SSLS) is an important part of intelligent logistics and warehouse management in the factory.

While handling has become increasingly automated, sorting is still a labor-intensive operation that requires a large number of employees and takes an extremely long time.

You may ask, why can’t sorting be automated when it is simply a matter of picking up the corresponding items and putting them back down? The reason lies in the complexity of the human brain. For the “small matter” of grasping something, the human brain will quickly identify the grasping point of different objects, and the robot does not have such cognitive ability.

If the robot arm is the “arm” of an industrial robot, it enables it to grasp the action; Then the camera is the “eye”, so that the robot can recognize and track the object based on visual technology, and achieve “hand-eye coordination”. However, the robot lacks the “brain” of independent thinking, and cannot adjust the grasping strategy independently and carry out disorderly sorting in a mixed and obscured environment. Even by creating established programs, industrial robots can only recognize the grasp point of “known” items, that is, the placement of fixed, shaped objects.

In fact, not only in the logistics industry, but also in the warehouses and production lines of all walks of life, disorderly sorting tasks can be seen everywhere, and more than 90% need to rely on manual completion, and the cost can not be naturally reduced.