The first self-checkout system was installed in 1986 at a Kroger grocery store outside Atlanta. It took several decades, but the technology has finally proliferated throughout the United States. Given the automated direction grocery stores are heading, it seems like robotic packaging can’t be far away.
MIT’s CSAIL department is presenting this week RoboGroceryIt combines machine vision with a soft robotic gripper to pack a wide range of different items. To test the system, the researchers placed 10 unfamiliar objects on a supermarket conveyor belt.
The products ranged from delicate items such as grapes, bread, kale, muffins and crackers to much more solid items such as soup cans, food boxes and ice cream containers. The vision system activates first, detecting objects before determining their size and orientation on the belt.
When the gripper touches the grapes, the pressure sensors in your fingers determine that they are, in fact, delicate and therefore should not go to the bottom of the bag, something many of us no doubt learned the hard way. You then notice that the soup can has a more rigid structure and you push it into the bottom of the bag.
“This is an important first step toward robots packaging food and other items in real-world environments,” said Annan Zhang, one of the study’s lead authors. “While we are not yet ready for commercial deployment, our research demonstrates the power of integrating multiple sensing modalities into soft robotic systems.”
The team notes that there is still plenty of room for improvement, including upgrades to the gripper and imaging system to better determine how and in what order to pack things. As the system becomes more robust, it could also be expanded outside the supermarket to more industrial spaces, such as recycling plants.