The automation of warehouse operations is crucial for improving productivity and reducing human exposure to hazardous environments. One operation frequently performed in warehouses is bin-packing where items need to be placed into containers, either for delivery to a customer, or for temporary storage in the warehouse. Whilst prior bin-packing works have largely been focused on packing items into empty containers and have adopted collision-free strategies, it is often the case that containers will already be partially filled with items, often in suboptimal arrangements due to transportation about a warehouse. This paper presents a contact-aware packing approach that exploits purposeful interactions with previously placed objects to create free space and enable successful placement of new items. This is achieved by using a contact-based multi-object trajectory optimizer within a model predictive controller, integrated with a physics-aware perception system that estimates object poses even during inevitable occlusions, and a method that suggests physically-feasible locations to place the object inside the container.

翻译：仓库运营的自动化对于提升生产效率和减少人类暴露于危险环境至关重要。仓库中频繁执行的一项操作是箱体装载，即需要将物品放入容器中，用于配送至客户或仓库内临时存储。尽管先前的箱体装载研究主要集中于将物品装入空容器，并采用无碰撞策略，但实际情况中，容器往往已经部分填充了物品，且由于仓库内的运输操作，这些物品的排列通常并非最优。本文提出了一种考虑接触的装载方法，该方法利用与先前放置物体的有目的相互作用来创造自由空间，从而实现新物品的成功放置。这是通过在一个模型预测控制器中集成基于接触的多物体轨迹优化器，结合一个即使在不可避免的遮挡情况下也能估计物体姿态的物理感知系统，以及一种提出容器内物体物理可行放置位置的方法来实现的。