Autonomous Robots

Everything here is old technology. These bots know where they are by means of the bar-code locations, encoders in their wheels and possibly data from other types of sensors (triangulating from IR beacons which may also double as secondary comm channels), but basically this is no more or less advanced than a CNC mill, for instance. Motion-planning and all that? They both do that and using the same sorts of algorithms.

They don't collide because the system has an overview of their locations and does motion-planning in advance. They're not autonomous in this respect, their paths, speeds, directions and so forth are distributed to them from a central system. Local obstacle avoidance using ultrasonic sonars is about is autonomous as they get. Except for this they're no different, really, than the way CNC mill works except for implementation.

My company built truly autonomous robots in the 80s. NASA has some for research platforms as well as nuclear power plants using our robots inside the containment vessel as inspectors. Even manufacturing plants where they moved trays between machining centers. It looks impressive in the video, but all of it is old technology (they also took the liberty of speeding-up the video to make these bots look faster. They're not. Trust me)

So yer sayin' it's a hive mind....?

"Division is futile; you will be approximated."

-- Pentium FDIV Borug, c. 1994

The picker/packer jobs are next.....

http://www.everything-robotic.com/2012_03_01_archive.html

after the delivery truck driver

For counterpoint, Google "Forklift Klaus".

I *LOVE* that safety video.

(As an added bonus for German nationals, the calm, deadpan narrator, it the same guy who does the official German safety videos. So it's like getting Dan Rather to do a spoof of a 60 Minutes segment. (Dan was on 60 Minutes, right?)