A Real Application of an Autonomous Industrial Mobile Manipulator within Industrial Context
José Luis Outón, Ibon Merino, Iván Villaverde, Aitor Ibarguren, Héctor Herrero, Paul Daelman, Basilio Sierra
Abstract
In modern industry there are still a large number of low added-value processes that can be automated or semi-automated with safe cooperation between robot and human operators. The European SHERLOCK project aims to integrate an autonomous industrial mobile manipulator (AIMM) to perform cooperative tasks between a robot and a human. To be able to do this, AIMMs need to have a variety of advanced cognitive skills like autonomous navigation, smart perception and task management. In this paper, we report the project’s tackle in a paradigmatic industrial application combining accurate autonomous navigation with deep learning-based 3D perception for pose estimation to locate and manipulate different industrial objects in an unstructured environment. The proposed method presents a combination of different technologies fused in an AIMM that achieve the proposed objective with a success rate of 83.33% in tests carried out in a real environment.