Autonomous Discharge of Coffee Sacks from Overseas Containers

In many fields of production for processing tasks with high frequency and repeatability, robots are commonly used. However, the use of industrial and service robots also increases in the logistics sector. Container handling, particularly the unloading of for example coffee sacks, has enormous potential for automation with robotics. The heavy weight together with the deformability of these sacks and unpredictable stack situations inside a container have the highest mechanical and cognitive demands on the gripper technology and the corresponding gripping strategy. This paper describes the development and implementation of such a gripping process.