Amazon Picking Challenge at RoboCup 2016
19 Dec 2015
Amazon Robotics is pleased to
announce the second edition of our manipulation contest to be held at
RoboCup at the end of June 2016 in Leipzig, Germany (http://www.robocup2016.org/).
Every day, Amazon is able to quickly pick, pack and ship millions of items to customers from a network of fulfillment centers all over the globe. This wouldn’t be possible without leveraging cutting-edge advances in technology. Amazon Robotics reduces the time employees spend walking the fulfillment center floor by using thousands of autonomous mobile robots to bring the inventory directly to the pick workers. Commercially viable automated picking in unstructured environments still remains a difficult challenge. In order to spur the advancement of this technology, we are excited to announce the second Amazon Picking Challenge, which will take place at RoboCup 2016. It is our goal to use Amazon Picking Challenge to strengthen the ties between the industrial and academic robotic communities and promote shared and open solutions to the challenges in unstructured automation.
This competition will challenge entrants to build their own robot hardware and software that can attempt simplified versions of the general task of picking items from shelves. The challenge is made up of two main tasks:
Up to $80,000 in prizes will be awarded, and participants will share and disseminate their approach to improve future challenge results and
industrial implementations.
Amazon Robotics will provide qualifying teams with a practice shelf and inventory to prepare for the challenge. Certain qualifying teams will also
receive grant funding to be used towards travel to attend RoboCup 2016 as well as towards the cost of shipping robots.
To learn more about the Amazon Picking Challenge, to view the official rules and the qualifications for participation and to sign up for email updates, visit our website: http://amazonpickingchallenge.org.
Every day, Amazon is able to quickly pick, pack and ship millions of items to customers from a network of fulfillment centers all over the globe. This wouldn’t be possible without leveraging cutting-edge advances in technology. Amazon Robotics reduces the time employees spend walking the fulfillment center floor by using thousands of autonomous mobile robots to bring the inventory directly to the pick workers. Commercially viable automated picking in unstructured environments still remains a difficult challenge. In order to spur the advancement of this technology, we are excited to announce the second Amazon Picking Challenge, which will take place at RoboCup 2016. It is our goal to use Amazon Picking Challenge to strengthen the ties between the industrial and academic robotic communities and promote shared and open solutions to the challenges in unstructured automation.
This competition will challenge entrants to build their own robot hardware and software that can attempt simplified versions of the general task of picking items from shelves. The challenge is made up of two main tasks:
- First, the robots will be presented with a stationary inventory shelf and be asked to transfer a subset of the products from the shelf to a tote.
-
Second, the robots need to pull items out of an unstructured tote
and store them successfully to a shelf between other items.
Up to $80,000 in prizes will be awarded, and participants will share and disseminate their approach to improve future challenge results and
industrial implementations.
Amazon Robotics will provide qualifying teams with a practice shelf and inventory to prepare for the challenge. Certain qualifying teams will also
receive grant funding to be used towards travel to attend RoboCup 2016 as well as towards the cost of shipping robots.
To learn more about the Amazon Picking Challenge, to view the official rules and the qualifications for participation and to sign up for email updates, visit our website: http://amazonpickingchallenge.org.