Abstract-This paper presents a overview of the inaugural Amazon Picking Challenge along with a summary of a survey conducted among the 26 participating teams. The challenge goal was to design an autonomous robot to pick items from a warehouse shelf. This task is currently performed by human workers, and there is hope that robots can someday help increase efficiency and throughput while lowering cost. We report on a 28-question survey posed to the teams to learn about each team's background, mechanism design, perception apparatus, planning and control approach. We identify trends in this data, correlate it with each team's success in the competition, and discuss observations and lessons learned based on survey results and the authors' personal experiences during the challenge.Note to Practitioners: Abstract-Perception, motion planning, grasping, and robotic system engineering has reached a level of maturity that makes it possible to explore automating simple warehouse tasks in semi-structured environments that involve high-mix, low-volume picking applications. This survey summarizes lessons learned from the first Amazon Picking Challenge, highlighting mechanism design, perception, and motion planning algorithms, as well as software engineering practices that were most successful in solving a simplified order fulfillment task. While the choice of mechanism mostly affects execution speed, the competition demonstrated the systems challenges of robotics and illustrated the importance of combining reactive control with deliberative planning.

A wavelength selective uncooled infrared (IR) sensor using two-dimensional plasmonic crystals (2D PLCs) has been developed. The numerical investigation of 2D PLCs demonstrates that the wavelength of absorption can be mainly controlled by the period of the surface structure. A microelectromechanical systems-based uncooled IR sensor with 2D PLCs as the IR absorber was fabricated through a complementary metal oxide semiconductor and a micromachining technique. The selective enhancement of responsivity was observed at the wavelength that coincided with the period of the 2D-PLC absorber.

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