A voice-commandable robotic forklift working alongside humans in minimally-prepared outdoor environments

— One long-standing challenge in robotics is the realization of mobile autonomous robots able to operate safely in existing human workplaces in a way that their presence is accepted by the human occupants. We describe the development of a multi-ton robotic forklift intended to operate alongside human personnel, handling palletized materials within existing, busy, semi-structured outdoor storage facilities. The system has three principal novel characteristics. The first is a multimodal tablet that enables human supervisors to use speech and pen-based gestures to assign tasks to the forklift, including manipulation, transport, and placement of palletized cargo. Second, the robot operates in minimally-prepared, semistructured environments, in which the forklift handles variable palletized cargo using only local sensing (and no reliance on GPS), and transports it while interacting with other moving vehicles. Third, the robot operates in close proximity to people, including its human sup...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Seth J. Teller, Matthew R. Walter, Matthew E. Antone, Andrew Correa, Randall Davis, Luke Fletcher, Emilio Frazzoli, Jim Glass, Jonathan P. How, Albert S. Huang, Jeong Hwan Jeon, Sertac Karaman, Brandon Luders, Nicholas Roy, Tara Sainath
• Keywords: Forklift, Human, ICRA 2010, Robot, Robotics