On June 15 and 16, 2010, the MIT Agile Robotics team demonstrated
three robots at a busy SSA (Supply Support Activity, essentially
an outdoor warehouse and supply depot) at Fort Lee in Virginia:
a robot forklift; a robot rover; and a two-armed robot porter.
The robot forklift demonstration included: understanding and execution
of verbal commands; interpretation of tablet gestures and speech;
seamless handoff of control from autonomous to manned and back again;
interpretation of a narrated guided tour of palletized supplies;
use of visual memory to find and fetch specific pallets; detection
of spoken or shouted "Stop" commands; autonomous approach, lifting,
transport and placement of palletized supplies; and spoken confirmation
of commands.
The robot rover demonstration included the ability to follow a human
on foot while she walked through a complex environment, so that the
human could point out the locations of various objects in the SSA.
The robot porter demonstration included two-handed lifting of one box
at a time from a collection of several boxes in front of the robot,
turning to a waiting human, holding each box out in preparation for a
handoff, sensing the human's tugging at the box, and releasing the box.
See
http://agile.mit.edu for more information.
