Approaches Regarding Automatic Control of Material Handling Robots

Abstract

To increase the construction site efficiency, various approaches regarding automatic control of material handling robots have been developed. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for autonomous material handling, which has been evaluated through field experiments in construction sites. The proposed algorithm of automatic control has three characteristics considering its practicalities: (i) the navigation among loading zones and unloading zones does not require a global map or self-localization; (ii) a series of operations including loading, unloading, and transportation can be carried out fully automatically; (iii) elevator operations required for vertical transportation (e.g., door opening and closing, floor selection, and detection of getting on and off) can be conducted automatically based on robot-elevator communication.