[btbuildem]

The suction "cup" seems to be doing a good job, but I don't think bags are made to be handled that way. Did you alternate test with some kind of a grabber (like the claw machine, but actually effective)? It would make the grasp selection problem much more tractable imo, since all bags have at least one "grasp point" built in.

In teleoperated mode, I'm guessing you're using the captured data to train the autonomous mode?

Final note, the robot looks beefy enough to lift an entire airplane, forget luggage -- is it overengineered on purpose?

[dmillard]

The cup has taken us very far, which we're excited about, but it's definitely not enough - we're currently testing a multimodal claw-ish + suction gripper, which we've had good results with so far but aren't ready to unveil.

The teleop data is really useful for training data indeed, and lets us collect data on current failure points (e.g. with suction, just how far can we tilt this fabric bag before it peels away, etc). We're not going full behavior-cloned end-to-end for a lot of reasons (sample complexity, safety, adaptability, etc), but we do a lot of learning in specific parts of the system (particularly around grasping and placement).

The robot is indeed beefy, as many robots rated for 50kg applications are (check them out online). We've accidentally stress tested this unit way beyond 50kg without a hiccup, so we're very interested in figuring out what the right-size unit is for our application. There are a few other great aspects to this unit - it's a 7-DOF arm + 1 more DOF for the linear rail, so we have two extra degrees of freedom to play with for collision avoidance during planning.

[michaelt]

Suction cups are way better than multi-finger grippers.

Multi-finger grippers rely on "affordances" i.e. space between the boxes to get the fingers in. If the boxes are pushed up against one another, you've got to do something to make space for the fingers first. So to grab a box with a multi-finger gripper you need space at the top, left and right.

Suction cups, on the other hand? They only need access to the top. No need for space at the left and right, no need to slide things to make space, just apply the suction cup and pull upwards.

Suction cups can also be made of soft, flexible rubber so if the planning is a bit inaccurate? No problem, the suction cup just bends. A multi-finger gripper, though? If the fingers are rigid and strong enough to lift a 30kg bag then they're also probably rigid and strong enough to punch a hole in an adjacent bag.

Suction cups do have a bunch of disadvantages, of course. Porous materials you can't get a seal on. Vacuuming up detritus and messing up your vacuum generator. The payload swinging about on the flexible suction cup. Losing vacuum and dropping the load if there's a power cut.

But they're certainly a great starting point in an application like this one.

[moralestapia]

@btbuildem isn't arguing any of that; the concern is that if you grab a bag the wrong way it may break open.