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What Is It?
One of the early exploitations of robotic technology in the libraries is the utilization of its mechanical prowess to automate labor-intensive and repetitive tasks and achieve efficiency and accuracy. Automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) is a “computer-controlled mechanical system designed to move items efficiently into compact storage and out again automatically, without human intervention” (Reitz, 2013). ASRS, as a warehouse management system, employs robotic device to automate the storing and retrieving of inventory on demand. The mobile robots traverse across storage racks in retrieving or storing items based on their relevant or absolute locations in the ASRS database.
University of Limerick
Macquaire University
Sonoma State University
University of Chicago
Above: ASRS at Oviatt Library, California State University Northridge (source: https://library.csun.edu/About/ASRS)
Use Case - Commercial Systems
The Oviatt Library of the California State University Northridge is said to be the world's first library to adopt ASRS technology into its operations in 1991[1] (Heinrich & Willis, 2013; Kovalcik & Villalobos, 2019). As the technology continues to improve and benefits realized, ASRS has been adopted by more than 20 academic libraries over the years (Wikipedia, 2022). Most of these libraries chose existing commercial products, mostly from Dematic, and there is a plethora of case studies from ASRS sites, including California State University, Northridge (Heinrich & Willis, 2013; Kovalcik & Villalobos, 2019), Colgate University (Rapp, 2011), Eastern Michigan University (Bullard & Wrosch, 2009), Macquarie University in Australia (Burton & Kattau, 2013; Peasley, 2012), University of Limerick in Ireland (McCaffrey, 2021), University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Haslam et al., 2002), and University of Nevada, Reno (Adams, 2013).
[1] For a history of adoption of Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems in library field, please see Bullard, R. & Wrosch, J. (2009). Eastern Michigan University’s Automated Storage and Retrieval System: 10 Years Later. Journal of Access Services, 6(3), 388–395. https://doi.org/10.1080/15367960902894187
Above: A University of Nevada, Reno staffer stands in front of one of 17 back-of-house computers used to operate its ASRS system (source: https://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2021/libraries-mars-upgrade)
Home-Grown ASRS
Several institutions took the opposite route and developed prototypes of home-grown robotic systems in fetching or shelving materials in library settings. At Johns Hopkins University, the Comprehensive Access to Printed Materials project built an autonomous mobile robotic library system for retrieving items from bookshelves and bringing them to a scanning station at an off-site storage facility (Suthakorn et al., 2002; Suthakorn et al., 2006).
Use Case - Universitat Jaume I
For the last two decades, researchers at Universitat Jaume I in Spain have been continuously training a UJI Librarian Robot, mobile robot, to perform the task of searching and retrieving a book requested by patrons. The robot will perform the tasks of traversing to the book stack where the requested book is located, identifying this book on the shelf by scanning the call number label via computer vision and optical character recognition, retrieve the book from the shelf using its robotic gripper, and finally brings the book to an assigned location (Martinez-Martin et al.,2019; Prats et al., 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2007, 2008; Ramos-Garijo et al., 2003). The latest variant of the robot, called UJI aerial librarian robot, incorporates a quadrotor drone to guide its navigation through library book stacks (Martinez-Martin et al., 2021).
Left Top: UJI Librarian Robot (source: https://youtu.be/2-Neua2U0EY)
Left Bottom: UJI aerial librarian robot (source: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/4/1079/htm)
Above: Integrated book browsing robot at University of Tsukuba (source: http://www.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/~ohya/pdf/IROS2002-TMY.pdf)
Use Case
There are several robotic projects on retrieving books from shelves in Japan. At University of Tsukuba, researchers developed a book browsing robot system to assist patrons browse books located in remote storage facility. The mobile robot is designed to navigate to target bookshelf, identifies and retrieves the requested book, open the book and turns pages, scan and transmit page images to requesters, and finally reshelve the book after its use. This experiment showed the prototype system was capable to perform majority of the tasks, while further improvements for its operability and reliability are needed (Tomizawa et al., 2002, 2003a, 2003b, 2005). Jia and his colleagues at University of Electro-Communications, another Japanese university, created a robot supporting system that patrons can interact with the robot in recognizing specific book on the bookshelf and retrieving it using the robot hand (Jia, Murakami, Chugo, & Takase, 2009; Jia, Yusuke, Li, Yang, & Zuo, 2009). The system shows a 90% success rate in testing, with further improvements in the areas of recognition precision and flexible functionality. At Shibaura Institute of Technology, researchers developed a book arrangement system that performs the task of inserting book into a bookshelf by a robot arm (Nakajima et al., 2011). The results demonstrated that the system is capable to widen the gap between books and insert both hardcover and softcover books into the space created.
References
Adams, C. (2013). Managing Automated Storage in the 21st Century Library. In Robots in Academic Libraries: Advancements in Library Automation (pp. 115–127).
Bullard, R. & Wrosch, J. (2009). Eastern Michigan University’s Automated Storage and Retrieval System: 10 Years Later. Journal of Access Services, 6(3), 388–395. https://doi.org/10.1080/15367960902894187
Burton, F. & Kattau, M. (2013). Out of Sight but not Lost to View: Macquarie University Library’s Stored Print Collection. Australian Academic and Research Libraries, 44(2), 102–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2013.795473
Haslam, M., Kwon, M. L., Pearson, M., Vent, M., & White, M. (2002). The automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) in Lied Library. Library Hi Tech, 20(1), 71–89. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830210420708
Heinrich, H. & Willis, E. (2014). Automated storage and retrieval system: a time-tested innovation. Library Management, 35(6/7), 444–453. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-09-2013-0086
Jia, S., Murakami, T., Chugo, D., & Takase, K. (2009). RTM-based robot system for supporting book acquisition. 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, 566–571. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBIO.2009.4913064
Jia, S., Yusuke, M., Li, M., Yang, J., & Zuo, G. (2009). An interactive intelligent robot system for supporting book acquisition. 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), 1045–1050. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBIO.2009.5420732
Kovalcik, J. & Villalobos, M. (2019). Automated storage & retrieval system: From storage to service. Information Technology and Libraries, 38(4), 114–124. https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v38i4.11273
Martinez-Martin, E., Recatala, G., & del Pobil, A. P. (2019). Transforming library operation with robotics. Paper presented at Information Technology Satellite Meeting “Robots in Libraries: Challenge or Opportunity?”; IFLA WLIC: Dublin, Ireland, 2019. http://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/2696/1/s08-2019-martinez-martin-en.pdf
Martinez-Martin, E., Ferrer, E., Vasilev, I., & del Pobil, A. P. (2021). The UJI aerial librarian robot: A quadcopter for visual library inventory and book localisation. Sensors, 21(4), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041079
McCaffrey, C. (2021). Planning and implementing an automated storage and retrieval system at the University of Limerick. In Atkinson, J. ed. Technology, Change and the Academic Library. Hull, UK: Chandos Publishing.
Nakajima, T., Yoshimi, T., Mizukawa, M., & Ando, Y. (2011). A study of book arrangement task by robot arm - Book insert operation to bookshelf. 2011 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII), 738–743. https://doi.org/10.1109/SII.2011.6147540
Prats, M., Ramos-Garijo, R., Sanz, P. J., & Del Pobil, A. (2004a). Autonomous Localization and Extraction of Books in a Library. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.472.7916&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Prats, M., Ramos-Garijo, R., Sanz, P. J., & Del Pobil, A. (2004b). Recent progress in the UJI librarian robot. 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583), 6, 5227–5232 vol.6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSMC.2004.1401024
Prats, M., Sanz, P. J., & del Pobil, A. (2005). Model-based tracking and hybrid force/vision control for the UJI librarian robot. 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 1090–1095. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2005.1545481
Prats, M., Martinez, E., Sanz, P. J., & del Pobil, A. P. (2008). The UJI librarian robot. Intelligent Service Robotics, 1(4), 321–335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11370-008-0028-1
Prats, M., Sanz, P., Del Pobil, A., Martínez, E., & Marín, R. (2007). Towards multipurpose autonomous manipulation with the UJI service robot. Robotica, 25(2), 245-256. https://doi:10.1017/S0263574706003304
Reitz, J. (2013). Online dictionary for library and information science. ABC-CLIO. http://products.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_about.
Ramos-Garijo, R., Prats, M., Sanz, P. J., & Del Pobil, A. (2003). An autonomous assistant robot for book manipulation in a library. SMC’03 Conference Proceedings. 2003 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Conference Theme - System Security and Assurance (Cat. No.03CH37483), 4, 3912–3917 vol.4. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSMC.2003.1244499
Rapp. (2011). Robot visions: more academic libraries are starting to embrace robotic retrieval systems to address problems of storage, space, and costs--and are creating transformed library spaces for patrons. Library Journal (1976), 136(15), 20–.
Suthakorn, J, Sangyoon, L., Zhou, Y., Thomas, R, Choudhury, S, & Chirikjian, G. (2002). A robotic library system for an off-site shelving facility. In: Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292). Vol 4. IEEE; 2002:3589-3594 vol.4. doi:10.1109/ROBOT.2002.1014266
Suthakorn, J, Lee, S., Zhou, Y, Choudhury, S, & Chirikjian, G. S. (2006). An enhanced robotic library system for an off-site shelving facility. In: Field and Service Robotics. Vol 24. Springer Berlin Heidelberg; 2006:437-446. doi:10.1007/10991459_42
Tomizawa, T., Ohya, A., & Yuta, S. (2002). Book browsing system using an autonomous mobile robot teleoperated via the internet. Proceedings 2002 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems: September 30-October 4, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland, 2, 1284–1289. https://doi.org/10.1109/IRDS.2002.1043931
Tomizawa, T., Ohya, A., & Yuta, S. (2003a). Object posture recognition for remote book browsing robot system. Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453), 4, 3218–3223 vol.3. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2003.1249652
Tomizawa, T., Ohya, A., & Yuta, S. (2003b). Remote book browsing system using a mobile manipulator. 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422), 1, 256–261 vol.1. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2003.1241605
Tomizawa T., Ohya A., & Yuta, S. (2005) A robot system for remote book browsing IEEE Transactions on Electronics Information & Systems 125, pp 863-9
Wikipedia (May 3, 2022). Automated storage and retrieval system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_storage_and_retrieval_system
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