Teleoperated Omni-directional Dual Arm Mobile Manipulation Robotic System with Shared Control for Retail Store

The swiftly expanding retail sector is increasingly adopting autonomous mobile robots empowered by artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to gain an edge in the competitive market. However, these autonomous robots encounter challenges in adapting to the dynamic nature of retail products, often struggling to operate autonomously in novel situations. In this study, we introduce an omni-directional dual-arm mobile robot specifically tailored for use in retail environments. Additionally, we propose a tele-operation method that enables shared control between the robot and a human operator. This approach utilizes a Virtual Reality (VR) motion capture system to capture the operator's commands, which are then transmitted to the robot located remotely in a retail setting. Furthermore, the robot is equipped with heterogeneous grippers on both manipulators, facilitating the handling of a wide range of items. We validate the efficacy of the proposed system through testing in a mockup of retail environment, demonstrating its ability to manipulate various commonly encountered retail items using both single and dual-arm coordinated manipulation techniques.

An Efficient Method for Accurate Pose Estimation and Error Correction of Cuboidal Objects

The proposed system outlined in this paper is a solution to a use case that requires the autonomous picking of cuboidal objects from an organized or unorganized pile with high precision. This paper presents an efficient method for precise pose estimation of cuboid-shaped objects, which aims to reduce errors in target pose in a time-efficient manner. Typical pose estimation methods like global point cloud registrations are prone to minor pose errors for which local registration algorithms are generally used to improve pose accuracy. However, due to the execution time overhead and uncertainty in the error of the final achieved pose, an alternate, linear time approach is proposed for pose error estimation and correction. This paper presents an overview of the solution followed by a detailed description of individual modules of the proposed algorithm.