Cartman: Cartesian Manipulator for Warehouse Automation in Cluttered Environments

Robotic manipulation and grasping in cluttered and unstructured environments is a current challenge for robotics. Enabling robots to operate in these challenging environments have direct applications from automating warehouses to harvesting fruit in agriculture. One of the main challenges associated with these difficult robotic manipulation tasks is the motion planning and control problem for multi-DoF (Degree of Freedom) manipulators. This paper presents the design and performance evaluation of a novel low cost Cartesian manipulator, Cartman who took first place in the Amazon Robotics Challenge 2017. It can perform pick and place tasks of household items in a cluttered environment. The robot is capable of linear speeds of 1 m/s and angular speeds of 1.5 rad/s, capable of sub-millimeter static accuracy and safe payload capacity of 2kg. Cartman can be produced for under 10 000 AUD. The complete design will be open sourced and will be available at the time of ICRA 2018.