Robotic bin-picking: Benchmarking robotics grippers with modified YCB object and model set

Robotic bin-picking is increasingly important in the order-picking process in intralogistics. However, many aspects of the robotic bin-picking process (object detection, grasping, manipulation) still require the research community\u27s attention. Established methods are used to test robotic grippers, enabling comparability of the research community\u27s results. This study presents a modified YCB Robotic Gripper Assessment Protocol that was used to evaluate the performance of four robotic grippers (two-fingered, vacuum, gecko, and soft gripper). During the testing, 45 objects from the modified YCB Object and Model Set from the packaging categories, tools, small objects, spherical objects, and deformable objects were grasped and manipulated. The results of the robotic gripper evaluation show that while some robotic grippers performed substantially well, there is an expressive grasp success variation over diverse objects. The results indicate that selecting the object grasp point next to selecting the most suitable robotic gripper is critical in successful object grasping. Therefore, we propose grasp point determination using mechanical software simulation with a model of a two-fingered gripper in an ADAMS/MATLAB co-simulation. Performing software simulations for this task can save time and give comparable results to real-world experiments

End-to-end deep learning-based framework for path planning and collision checking: bin picking application

Real-time and efficient path planning is critical for all robotic systems. In particular, it is of greater importance for industrial robots since the overall planning and execution time directly impact the cycle time and automation economics in production lines. While the problem may not be complex in static environments, classical approaches are inefficient in high-dimensional environments in terms of planning time and optimality. Collision checking poses another challenge in obtaining a real-time solution for path planning in complex environments. To address these issues, we propose an end-to-end learning-based framework viz., Path Planning and Collision checking Network (PPCNet). The PPCNet generates the path by computing waypoints sequentially using two networks: the first network generates a waypoint, and the second one determines whether the waypoint is on a collision-free segment of the path. The end-to-end training process is based on imitation learning that uses data aggregation from the experience of an expert planner to train the two networks, simultaneously. We utilize two approaches for training a network that efficiently approximates the exact geometrical collision checking function. Finally, the PPCNet is evaluated in two different simulation environments and a practical implementation on a robotic arm for a bin-picking application. Compared to the state-of-the-art path planning methods, our results show significant improvement in performance by greatly reducing the planning time with comparable success rates and path lengths.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

WiseBench: A Motion Planning Benchmarking Framework for Autonomous Vehicles

Rapid advances in every sphere of autonomous driving technology have intensified the need to be able to benchmark and compare different approaches. While many benchmarking tools tailored to different sub-systems of an autonomous vehicle, such as perception, already exist, certain aspects of autonomous driving still lack the necessary depth and diversity of coverage in suitable benchmarking approaches - autonomous vehicle motion planning is one such aspect. While motion planning benchmarking tools are abundant in the robotics community in general, they largely tend to lack the specificity and scope required to rigorously compare algorithms that are tailored to the autonomous vehicle domain. Furthermore, approaches that are targeted at autonomous vehicle motion planning are generally either not sensitive enough to distinguish subtle differences between different approaches, or not able to scale across problems and operational design domains of varying complexity. This work aims to address these issues by proposing WiseBench, an autonomous vehicle motion planning benchmark framework aimed at comprehensively uncovering fine and coarse-grained differences in motion planners across a wide range of operational design domains. WiseBench outlines a robust set of requirements for a suitable autonomous vehicle motion planner. These include simulation requirements that determine the environmental representation and physics models used by the simulator, scenario-suite requirements that govern the type and complexity of interactions with the environment and other traffic agents, and comparison metrics requirements that are geared towards distinguishing the behavioral capabilities and decision making processes of different motion planners. WiseBench is implemented using a carefully crafted set of scenarios and robust comparison metrics that operate within an in-house simulation environment, all of which satisfy these requirements. The benchmark proved to be successful in comparing and contrasting two different autonomous vehicle motion planners, and was shown to be an effective measure of passenger comfort and safety in a real-life experiment. The main contributions of our work on WiseBench thus include: a scenario creation methodology for the representative scenario suite, a comparison methodology to evaluate different motion planning algorithms, and a proof-of-concept implementation of the WiseBench framework as a whole