2016/01/21 by Nikolaus Correll, Correll, Nikolaus, Kostas E. Bekris +18 · 15 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics Optimization #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence #Optimization and Search Problems #Robotics (cs.RO) #cs.RO
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1601.05484
openalex publication_date 2016/01/21 · arxiv created 2017/09/22 · arxiv updated 2017/09/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper presents a overview of the inaugural Amazon Picking Challenge along with a summary of a survey conducted among the 26 participating teams. The challenge goal was to design an autonomous robot to pick items from a warehouse shelf. This task is currently performed by human workers, and there is hope that robots can someday help increase efficiency and throughput while lowering cost. We report on a 28-question survey posed to the teams to learn about each team's background, mechanism design, perception apparatus, planning and control approach. We identify trends in this data, correlate it with each team's success in the competition, and discuss observations and lessons learned based on survey results and the authors' personal experiences during the challenge.