Load and Unload trucks - Use Locus Points to make driving bots into trucks safe and reliable

There's another idea in Aha that describes using Locus Points to help reinforce no-go zones. Like a class of Locus points that, if a bot sees them, it stops because it's somewhere it shouldn't be.

This approach could be used to add layers of safety and reliability to moving in and out of dock doors. For example:

We have a customer that uses a trailer to move materials from one facility to another on their property. It's the same trailer every day, every time. In this case Locus points could be added to the trailer and if the bot doesn't see those LPs then the bot would not proceed into the trailer. Additional layers of safety could be achieved by adding "gates" or "sandwich boards" or "partitions," which would have LPs on them and associates would place them near the dock doors, and if those are not present, then the bots would not move through the dock door. In addition to these measures, we could potentially place "flags" or "partitions" with no-go LPs on them, which would hang on the outside of the building, and would be visible if a trailer is not there, but would be hidden if the trailer is properly parked. Likewise, if there's a hydraulic ramp then "go" LPs could be mounted on the hinged part of the ramp that hangs down and when the trailer and ramp are properly in place then the "go" LP is visible and if either the trailer or ramp is not in the correct position then the LP would not be visible.

Another example is collaborating with the Boston Dynamics Stretch robot to directly palletize floor loaded goods onto pallets that are on top of Max, and then Max can perform automatic putaway into the warehouse.

Some or all of these approaches and others could be used to make operations around and through dock doors safer and more reliable.

Vector and in some cases Max are able to traverse over the ramps and into the trucks. The interior of the trailers can be mapped as part of the building and dock areas.