Many of the goods for sale in Europe and the US are
made in Asia and most of these items cross the ocean
in standardized shipping containers. To save on transport
costs, the majority of these goods are loaded on the floor
of the container and stacked to the ceiling without pallets.
When the container arrives at a port, it is loaded onto
a truck and sent to a distribution center. On arrival, the
contents of the container are typically unloaded by hand,
sorted, and stacked onto pallets so that they can be stored
in the warehouse. This very manual and labor-intensive
process can take several hours. Similarly, many long-haul
parcel trucks are loaded floor to ceiling without pallets
and require significant labor to unload.
In an attempt to deal with this problem, in 2003 DHL and
its business and research partners worked to develop a
new prototype – the Parcel Robot which consists essentially
of the following components: a chassis, a telescopic
conveyor belt, a 3D laser scanner, and a gripping system
made up of an articulated robotic arm and a grabber.
The robot is positioned in front of a container to unload
and uses its laser to scan all of the boxes. An integrated
computer then analyzes the various sizes of parcel and
determines the optimal unloading sequence. The robot
picks up a box and places it onto a conveyor that
transports the item out of the container and into