Door-to-Door Parcel Delivery From Supply Point to User’s Home With Heterogeneous Robot Team: The euROBIN First-Year Robotics Hackathon
Alejandro Suárez, Rainer Kartmann, Daniel Sebastian Leidner, Luca Rossini, J.B. Huber, Carlos S. Azevedo, Quentin Rouxel, Marko Bjelonic, Antonio González-Morgado, Christian Dreher, Peter Schmaus, Arturo Laurenzi, François Hélénon, Rodrigo Serra, Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Lorenz Wellhausen, Vicente Perez-Sanchez, Jianfeng Gao, Adrian Simon Bauer, Alessio De Luca · IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine · 2024
Logistics and service operations involving parcel preparation, delivery, and unpacking from a supply point to a user’s home could be carried out completely by robots in the near future, taking advantage of the capabilities of the different robot morphologies for the logistics, outdoor, and domestic environments. The use of robots for parcel delivery can contribute to the goals of sustainability and reduced emissions by exploiting their different locomotion modalities (wheeled, legged, and aerial). This article reports the development and results obtained from the first robotics hackathon celebrated as part of the European Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Network involving eight robotic platforms in three domains: 1) an industrial robotic arm for parcel preparation at the supply point, 2) a Centauro robot, a dual-arm aerial manipulator, and a wheeled-legged quadruped for parcel transportation, and 3) two humanoid robots and two commercial mobile manipulators for parcel delivery and unpacking in domestic scenarios. The article describes the joint operation and the evaluation scenario, the features and capabilities of the robots, particularly those involved in the realization of the tasks, and the lessons learned.