Automatic goods handling

货物装卸自动化

Robots are poised to start unloading lorries

机器人已准备好为卡车卸货

The last pieces of warehouse automation will soon be in place

仓库自动化的最后环节将很快就位


Unloading lorries is wearisome for people, but hardly an intellectual challenge. For robots it is the reverse. Robots never tire. They do, however, have problems interpreting the data streaming in from the cameras and laser scanners that are their eyes. Seeing where one box in the back of a crowded lorry ends and another begins is second nature to a human being. But even the best artificial-vision systems struggle to cope.

给卡车卸货是累人的体力活，但在智力上没什么挑战。对于机器人来说恰恰相反，它们从不会感觉到劳累。但是，机器人在解析摄像头和激光扫描仪这些眼睛采集的数据时面临难题。在一辆装满货物的卡车尾部，识别箱子的首尾是人类的第二天性，但即使最先进的人工智能系统也很难做到。

And that is just the start. The next question is what the robot should do with what it sees. The less tidy the contents, the greater the problem. Shrink-wrapped pallets of packages are one thing, the miscellaneous jumbles of obxts handled by parcel-delivery businesses quite another. Cases may get wedged, or be fumbled. Or the robot may need to work out how to lift an irregular consignment like a set of skis. People learn how to do such things gradually, as they grow up. And machines have to learn, too. That takes time and a lot of training.

这仅仅是个开始，下一个问题是机器人如何处理它所看到的。东西越杂乱，问题就越大。使用收缩薄膜包装的包裹托盘是一回事，快递公司装卸的混杂物品是另一回事，箱子可能被卡主或者漏掉。机器人可能需要弄清楚如何搬运不规则货物，比如一套滑雪板。人类随着年龄的增长逐渐学会如何做这类事情，机器也必须学习，这需要时间和大量的培训。
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Unloading lorries is therefore one of the few parts of operating a warehouse that has resisted automation. But not for much longer. A new generation of cargo-handling robots is poised to take on the task.

因此，卡车卸货是少数几个阻碍仓库自动化的环节之一。但不会太久了，新一代货物搬运机器人已准备好承担这项任务。

A lorry-load of ideas

整卡车的思路

The robotics division of Honeywell, a large American technology company, has come up with a vehicle-sized unit (see picture) that fits onto the back of a lorry. It has a large arm fitted with suction cups which can pick up several boxes at a time and then feed them onto a conveyor belt, or knock down a wall of boxes and sweep them onto the conveyor. An individual human worker can unload between 600 and 1,200 boxes an hour. Honeywell hopes that, once its robot is perfected, a single crew chief will be able to supervise the simultaneous unloading of three or four lorries, each at rates of up to 1,500 boxes an hour.

美国大型科技公司“霍尼韦尔”的机器人技术部门研制出一种车辆大小的装置，被安装在卡车尾部。它的大型机械臂装有吸盘，每次可以抓取多个箱子，然后将它们搬运到传送带上，也可以推倒成墙的箱子，将它们推送至传送带上。每名人类工人每小时可卸下600-1200个箱子。“霍尼韦尔”公司希望机器人发展完善后，一名组长能够监视三四辆卡车同时卸货，每台机器人的卸货速度达每小时1500个箱子。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Thomas Evans, chief technology officer of Honeywell’s robotics operation, says the robot does not need to be as precise as the pick-and-place robots that work on assembly lines. But it is still a challenge for it to distinguish between individual boxes and to recognise and identify anomalous obxts such as loose pallets and the pallet jacks used to move stacked pallets around. At the moment, therefore, it works best with boxes of uniform size and shape.

霍尼韦尔公司机器人技术部门的首席技术官托马斯·埃文斯说，它不需要像装配线上的抓放式机器人那样精准作业，但它面临的挑战是区分单个箱子，识别和确认不规则的物件，例如：散装托盘、搬运堆垛托盘的托盘堆垛车。因此，目前它最适合搬运尺寸和形状统一的箱子。

Changing that will need a lot of training, which, in turn, means designing and assembling a variety of dummy loads inside a variety of vehicles. This is both time-consuming and labour-intensive. Dr Evans says his team can put together about four such test loads a day. Ideally, that number would be nearer 100—but running tests at this scale would be expensive. Digital simulations can help. They are, though, Dr Evans says, no substitute for the real thing. He is therefore negotiating with one of the potential customers for the robot, a company that already handles this volume of business, to do the training there.

改变这一状况需要大量的培训，这又意味着设计和装配各种仿真载荷装入各种车辆内，既耗时又费力。 埃文斯博士说，他的团队每天装配4个这样的试验载荷。在理想情况下，每天可装配100个，但进行这么大规模的试验耗资巨大。数字仿真可以提供帮助，但埃文斯博士说数字代替不了实物。因此，他正在与这种机器人的一个潜在客户谈判由他们做培训，该公司的业务量已达到这种规模。

In Massachusetts, a firm called Boston Dynamics takes a different approach from Honeywell’s. Boston Dynamics is famous in the wider world for an acrobatic humanoid robot called Atlas, and for Spot, a robot that resembles a dog and is now on sale as a device for monitoring what is happening in factories and other large spaces. The firm’s good-handling system, Stretch, is, however, the first it has custom-built for a particular task.

在马萨诸塞州，波士顿动力公司采取了不同于霍尼韦尔公司的方法。令波士顿动力闻名于世的是“阿特拉斯”人形杂技机器人，以及外观像狗的“斑点”机器人，这种已经上市的装置被用于监控工厂和其他大型场所的实时情况。然而，该公司的货物搬运装置“伸展”是首款为特定任务定制的机器人。

Stretch is smaller and more mobile than Honeywell’s robot, and is able, according to Kevin Blankespoor, Boston Dynamics’ general manager of warehouse robotics, to move easily from one lorry to another, or to a different part of a site altogether. It sports a single arm festooned with sensors and a suction gripper able to handle boxes weighing up to about 25kg. Unlike Honeywell’s system, Stretch can already manage the trick of examining a wall of boxes, working out their sizes and shapes, and choosing which to pick up first. It is, though, slower. The aim is that it will be able to handle 800 cases an hour.

“伸展”相比霍尼韦尔公司的机器人体积更小更灵活，根据波士顿动力公司仓库机器人技术总经理凯文·布兰克斯波尔的介绍，它还能够轻松地在卡车之间移动，或者完全移动到工作场所的另一地点。它只有一条机械臂，上面配有传感器和一个吸盘抓手，能够搬运25公斤左右的箱子。不同于霍尼韦尔的装置，“伸展”已经掌握技巧：检查堆叠成墙的箱子，计算出箱子的尺寸和形状，并决定先搬运哪只箱子，只是速度较慢，目标是每小时搬运800个箱子。

A third contender, Dill, is made by the Pickle Robot Company, also based in Massachusetts. Andrew Meyer, Pickle’s boss, believes Dill has an edge over the competition because Pickle’s engineers have focused on the robot’s ability to handle messy trailers with irregular loads. This is not just a matter of machine vision and an ability to work out where boxes are, but also of understanding the laws of physics, and therefore how particular obxts will behave. That helps Dill decide which is the best box to pick up next, and how to deal with it as speedily as possible without dropping it.

第三个角逐者是由泡菜机器人公司制造的“迪尔”机器人，该公司也位于马萨诸塞州。泡菜公司总裁安德鲁·梅耶相信“迪尔”有竞争优势，因为“泡菜”工程师专注于机器人为装运不规则货物的杂乱拖车卸货的能力。这不仅涉及机器视觉和识别箱子位置的能力，而且需要了解物理规律，从而知道特定物品的运动方式。这有助于“迪尔”决定下次抓取哪个箱子最好，如何在避免掉落的前提下尽快搬运箱子。

Keep on trucking

再接再厉

In particular, Dill is designed for what Mr Meyer terms “centaur operation”, in which human and robot collaborate, rather than the human’s role being merely supervisory. Dill is skilled at spotting problems it cannot deal with and then calling in human assistance. It can handle 98% of cases on its own, Mr Meyer claims—though it has problems with things like damaged goods and unexpected obxts. The upshot is an arrangement which, he says, has a maximum capacity of 1,600 packages an hour, with a realistic average of 1,000.

值得一提的是，“迪尔”是为梅耶先生所说的“半人马行动”而设计，即人类与机器人协作，人类不仅仅起到监督作用。“迪尔”善于发现它无法处理的问题，然后呼叫人类支援。梅耶先生声称，“迪尔”能独自搬运98%的箱子，但无法处理破损和意想不到的物品。他说结果是，该装置的峰值卸货速度每小时1600个包裹，现实平均速度1000个包裹。

The next task, which all three companies are now engaged in, is to run the unloading process in reverse by using robots to load lorries in the first place. Besides simply lugging boxes around, this also involves working out how to stack them efficiently. Solving that problem, and doing so at the speed which commerce requires, would allow warehouses to be almost completely automated. The firm that perfects this trick may not be popular with unxs. But managers will love it.

目前，这三家公司都在进行的下一项任务是逆向化卸货流程，率先利用机器人装货。除了简单的搬运箱子，还涉及到如何高效地堆垛箱子。一旦解决了这个问题，并达到商业用途所需要的速度，仓库几乎就实现了完全自动化。完善这一技术的公司可能不会受到工会的欢迎，但经理们会喜欢的。