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Robotics
Agile Robotics Forklift Demo at Fort Lee (June 2010)
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 <a href="http://agile.mit.edu" target="_blank">http://agile.mit.edu</a> for more information.