In-Truck Robotic Box Loading & Unloading System

Context

Designed and deployed a robotic loading and unloading system installed inside an electric delivery truck.
Boxes arrive from a postal warehouse via a conveyor belt into the vehicle, then a robotic arm detects incoming parcels, picks them, and loads and unloads them into storage racks sized by box dimensions.

My Contribution

• Designed overall system architecture and ROS2 integration
• Built TCP/IP communication between subsystems
• Developed backend + REST APIs with FastAPI
• Wrote the robot control program for arm motion and operations
• Containerized the full stack with Docker
• Built a React UI for monitoring and control

System Architecture

High-level pipeline: Conveyor → Detection → Task Assignment → Robot Control → Rack Placement → State Update

Key components:

• ROS2 nodes for robot control and hardware interface
• TCP/IP layer for external system communication
• FastAPI backend providing REST interfaces
• SQLite database for box state tracking
• React dashboard for rack occupancy monitoring and manual control

The architecture separated low-level robot execution, system state management, and external interfaces to enable independent testing/deployment of each subsystem.

Tech Stack

ROS2, TCP/IP, FastAPI, React, Docker, SQLite

Technical Highlights

• Real-time coordination between conveyor input and robotic picking
• State synchronization between ROS2 nodes and the web backend
• Containerized deployment for reproducible development
• Rack management logic for variable box sizes

Challenges:

• Reliable communication across distributed components
• Timing/synchronization between perception and actuation
• Safe operation in the constrained truck workspace

Impact

• Deployed and tested at CJ Logistics Yangji Logistics Center
• Demonstrated to affiliates from Kia, ZER01NE, and CJ Logistics
• End-to-end full-stack robotics integration from hardware to web UI

Videos