ROBOTIC GRASPING OF ITEMS IN INVENTORY SYSTEM

摘要

Robotic arms or manipulators can be utilized to grasp inventory items within an inventory system. Information about an item to be grasped can be detected and/or accessed from one or more databases to determine a grasping strategy for grasping the item with a robotic arm or manipulator. For example, one or more accessed databases can contain information about the item, characteristics of the item, and/or similar items, such as information indicating grasping strategies that have been successful or unsuccessful for such items in the past.

主权项

1. An inventory management system, comprising:
a robotic arm; an imaging device; and a management module configured to:
determine an identity of an inventory item located at a station;access, based on the determined identity of the inventory item, a record in an item database including characteristics of the inventory item;receive optical information from the imaging device related to geometric characteristics of the inventory item as observed at the station;identify, based at least in part on the characteristics from the record and the geometric characteristics of the inventory item, a grasping strategy for grasping the inventory item with the robotic arm, the grasping strategy being accessed from an item grasping database storing a plurality of grasping strategies for the inventory item, the plurality of grasping strategies for the inventory item being generated based at least in part on at least one of (i) one or more characteristics of the inventory item including at least one of weight, electrical conductivity, magnetic properties, slipperiness, porosity, deformability, or structural integrity; (ii) evaluation of a human-based grasping strategy for grasping the inventory item; (iii) grasping strategies for items with characteristics similar to the characteristics of the inventory item; or (iv) information about a success of grasping strategies that have been previously employed; andgenerate information for causing the robotic arm to perform the identified grasping strategy on the inventory item located at the station.