Luís Freitas Rocha, João Pedro Souza, Maria Silva Lopes and Artur José Cordeiro are the INESC TEC researchers who secured second place in the BIP Acceleration programme – the University of Porto’s initiative that helps research teams turn projects into businesses. The CARGO team presented an autonomous mobile manipulator for intralogistics and container unloading in warehouses, earning them €3K in funding and access to the School of Startups Foundations programme (offered by UPTEC) so that they can now explore the commercial potential of this INESC TEC container unloading prototype.
The INESC TEC researchers’ idea originated from the PRODUTECR3 research project, institutionally led by INESC TEC researcher Manuel Silva. Currently, the process of unloading containers in warehouses worldwide is still mostly carried out manually. As a result, in addition to being an ergonomically challenging process, it exposes workers to extreme weather conditions, creating a gap in the European market for flexible, affordable commercial robotic solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This situation has been further aggravated by the difficulty of recruiting labour.
These factors led to the idea for a robotic system combining – on a single mobile platform – autonomous navigation, robotic manipulation and 2D/3D perception using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
“The robot enters containers, detects, reaches and unloads boxes autonomously; the most distinguishing feature compared with the state of the art is the modular and interoperable architecture. This makes it easy to reconfigure the robot for multiple tasks – from picking to inventory counting and monitoring,” explained the INESC TEC researchers.
This solution can reduce operating costs, mitigate occupational risks and make industrial automation more accessible.
The CARGO team resorted to all these features during the programme’s final stage, the DemoDay – Pitch Day, held on 22 September at the PBS premises, which led them to secure second place.
Eight teams took part in this edition of the BIP Acceleration programme, which consisted of eight in-person workshops and culminated in the final session, where the teams had the opportunity to pitch their projects to innovation and entrepreneurship stakeholders from the ecosystem.
The Glio-Brain Plate team, from i3S, took first place, while the MyGene team, from the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto, that included one INESC TEC researcher, António Coelho, came third.
News, current topics, curiosities and so much more about INESC TEC and its community!
