“Unstructured” refers to an environment in which a robot arm is required to perform tasks that are not predetermined or predefined, and which may involve a variety of obstacles, objects, or situations.
Unstructured Robotics uses advanced sensing, 3D perception, automatic motion generation, and decision-making capabilities to adapt to the changing conditions and obstacles in their surroundings.
(Different environments require identifying different things in order to perform tasks.)
(Almost nothing is structured underwater.)
(Uneven terrain and produce in different locations on plants. These require real-time perception.)
(Objects in motion stay in motion - and are tough to predict!)
Structured Robotics generally refers to the use of robots in environments or tasks that are well-defined or ”structured”. A common example is a factory assembly line, where the robot arm is programmed to perform a specific task repeatedly, with minimal variation.
A structured environment has a clear layout, and the robot can be programmed or designed to perform specific actions or behaviors within that structure. Typically the robot is stationary and the environment does not change, meaning that it can perform tasks consistently without too much intelligence.
( An assembly line is a good example of a structured environment )
And combining the two we have Semi-Structured Robotics. This is the use of robots in environments that have some structure but also contain some unstructured or unpredictable elements. This type of robotics is particularly useful in scenarios where the environment may have a fixed layout, but the objects or obstacles within it may vary in their location, orientation, or shape. For example, in an outdoor industrial-scale strawberry picking task, the robot may follow the fixed rows of the farm field, but the location of the strawberries on the plants may vary.
Similarly, in a factory setting, a robot arm may be fixed to a specific location, but the orientation of the objects inside the boxes it needs to pick may be random. In such cases, the robot must rely on advanced sensing and perception techniques to adapt to the changing conditions and successfully complete the task at hand.
( These robots above have some structured parts of their environment, but also many unstructured aspects mixed in )
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