With demand for mobile robots spiking in supply chain operations worldwide, improvements in perception can enable safer and more efficient operations. DreamVu Inc. said today that Robotics Automation and Design Systems Inc. will use its PAL 360° 3D Vision System for obstacle detection and avoidance in its AMP series of autonomous mobile robots.
San Jose, Calif.-based DreamVu was founded in 2017 and provides omnidirectional 3D vision systems. The company said its camera-based systems use patented optics and imaging software to reduce system costs and deliver an “unparalleled” field of view, empowering customers to innovate with low-power, low-latency, single-stream video.
Robotics Automation and Design (RAAD) Systems offers robotic automation, engineering, and system design services. Bengaluru, India-based RAAD Systems said it plans to begin shipping the AMP platform for warehouse logistics by the end of 2020.
PAL to provide wide field of view to AMP robots
Autonomy in mobile robotics is highly dependent on the sensor stack, which is often one of the highest costs in an autonomous mobile robot (AMR). DreamVu said PAL simplifies such sensor stacks, saving money while also improving the AMR performance. With fewer sensors, computational requirements for image stitching are greatly reduced, improving perception and decision making required for safe, efficient maneuvering and navigation, it said.
PAL is the only single-sensor vision system to provide 360° stereoscopic sensing with depth perception, claimed DreamVu. It eliminates blind spots and combines full-color video with precise depth mapping and detection in a single video stream, said the company.
The AMP series will benefit from improved maneuverability thanks to the wide view provided by the PAL Vision System, stated Davis Packiaraj, senior software engineer at RAAD Systems. A single PAL system will replace two narrow field-of-view stereo cameras used in previous generations of the AMRs, he said.
RAAD Systems streamlines sensors
“Choosing DreamVu’s PAL Vision System was an easy decision for us once we evaluated it,” said Satish Sundar, CEO of RAAD Systems. “It provides a field of view, depth accuracy, and small obstacle detection that is hard to package in such a compact form factor and at such a low power level.”
“We’re able to greatly simplify our sensor stack, thanks to the performance achieved by PAL,” he added. “By receiving the complete field of view from a single sensor, our computational requirements for obstacle detection and avoidance were greatly reduced, saving battery life and deployment costs while reducing latency, so the AMP platforms can maneuver much more efficiently.”
“We were delighted that RAAD Systems chose PAL for their AMP platforms,” said Rajat Aggarwal, CEO of DreamVu. “Their team had spent several months evaluating multiple stereo vision systems, including our PAL Vision System, which includes our 360° 3D camera and the software development kit.”
