Development of a Dual-Arm Autonomous Container Unloading Robot System for Various Logistics Packages

This article presents ROGIBOT, an autonomous robot designed for high-speed unloading inside standard containers. Previous unloading robots have typically been limited to handling only box-shaped packages and a small number of items at a time. These limitations hinder their applicability in general logistics environments, which involve a wide variety of package types and require high throughput. To address these challenges, we propose a novel dual-arm robot equipped with multifunctional end effectors, including a vacuum array, a two-finger gripper, and an on-hand sliding surface. The components are designed to handle the most common types of logistics packages, such as boxes, plastic pouches, and bundle sacks. In particular, the on-hand sliding surface can draw packages efficiently using the frictional force generated by a rotating elastic conveyor belt. This enables the robot to unload multiple packages consecutively at high speed by sweeping the end effectors across the pile. In addition to the hardware, we introduce a package recognition method and a finite-state-machine (FSM)-based task planner that detects logistics packages and selects actions to maximize operational efficiency. In our evaluation, ROGIBOT was tested in a mock container and achieved a throughput of 2,030 pieces (packages) per hour (PPH), surpassing both state-of-the-art (SOTA) robots and typical human performance.