Enhanced Security and Efficiency in Sorting Centers through Computational Robotics
Status:
This project started in December 2023 and is still ongoing.
Researchers:
Simon Huber
Valentin N. Hartmann
Stelian Coros
Steffen Ochsenreither (Swiss Post)
Industry Partner:
Swiss Post
Description:
Swiss Post processes large volumes of parcels every day. It is desirable to increase the efficiency of the system, to ensure that parcels are where they are supposed to be at the right time, and to accurately measure the utilization of the system in order to allocate resources correctly. At the same time, it must be ensured that parcels are not tampered with by malicious actors.
The project aims to enable the tracking and reconstruction of parcels throughout a parcel facility. This enables dynamic routing for improved efficiency. At the same time, such a tracking system can act as a safeguard, i.e., enable anti-fraud and anti-tampering measures by ensuring that a parcel does not deviate from its intended path, and is not removed from where it is supposed to be. Further, the system can accurately measure and report the types of parcels along with the volume for recording transport utilization.
To achieve these goals, we are working on computer vision methods to reconstruct and track parcels, in addition to robotics manipulation in order to handle parcels and orient them in such a way that markers are visible and parcels do not obstruct the views of other parcels. These robotics problems include simple rearrangement problems that can be handled by single robots efficiently, and multi-robot collaboration problems where multiple robots need to work together to handle large or heavy parcels, in addition to multi-robot coordination problems where multiple robots work together to handle streams of parcels efficiently.