POSTino: a mobile robot for delivery pickup

The inspiration for this thesis project was derived from a task of the RoboCup@Home Education 2022. QThis competition is one of the main events in the field of educational robotics at a global scale, and in its @Home versions it has the purpose of making new generations of students interested in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics approach the development of solutions that could have an effective impact on daily life, providing the educative instruments in order to develop innovative ideas. The competition is divided in two categories: Standard Platform and Open Platform. The first one requires competing using only Pepper robots developed by Softbank Robotics, while the Open Platform (the one chosen in this case) admits participation using custom made robots. As described by the competition rulebook, a score based on the overall completeness of the solution gets assigned to each team, which has the pobbility of accessing the final phase of the competition, where an additional task will be assignes.

The chosen task for this project is named "Carry My Luggage". The goal described consists in transporting a payload from the starting position to the final one while following an operator. Bonus points get rewarded in case it is demonstrated that the robot can navigate the surrounding environment in a "conscious" way. The inspiration, derived from the nature of the chosen task, brought to the development of an idea based on a robot whose function can have a real impact on daily life and in a domestic sphere. In particular, it sought to provide support for achieving the social distancing imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic to help effectively prevent new infections. The idea stems from the evidence of data reporting a marked increase since the start of the pandemic in the number of home deliveries of products of all kinds. Before illustrating this idea, it is useful to refer to the context in which it was born, that is food delivery (the delivery at home of ready meals), one of the fastest growing sectors with a market that has more than tripled since the beginning of 2019.

Robot in action