Comprehensive Review of Robotized Freight Packing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper present an interesting state of the art in robotic 3D packing. Due to the booming of robotization in almost every industry area during last decades, the review is fruitful source of the knowledge within the area of Logistic 4,0. However, before potential publication a few improvements of the paper should be made for the paper to be more useful for a reader.

1. When the authors explain their research methodology, they should also explained which key words they used, what kind of databases, apart  Scopus and WoS, they searched.

2. In chapter 3.1 authors present robot solutions found in the literature and they conclude that e.g. "The maximum weight the gripper can hold is limited by the vacuum generation and the strength of the suction cups". From the cognitive point of view of the mass problem it would be worth to present quantity data characterizing analysed solutions, e.g. what is the range of load capacity of robots which authors met in analysed papers. These data can identify a next scientific/engineering gap in the robotic packaging area.

3. In all the tables summarizing the number of publications satisfying/dealing with a given condition (e.g. like in Tab. 4) the authors should also put the numbers of sources (e.g. in the row: cruciable - 2 papers - [33][34]). It would highly increase the utility of the paper for a potential reader. The same could be added to fig. 2.

4. The shape criteria (mentioned in lines 413-418) as well as offline and online criterion should be also characterized in the form of table with clearly referring to numbers of publications.

5. There are some editorial mistakes, e.g.:

line 152: [17 - 21

line 237: -  (see Section Error! Reference source not found.)

Best regards

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your valuable feedback and insightful comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered your suggestions and made several revisions to address the points raised. We outline our responses to each of your comments and the corresponding changes made to the manuscript in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Abstract should be extended,

 

Motivations and contributions of the study should be stated,

 

An illustrative Figure that represent the methodology of the study should be added,

 

Tables for summarizing the reviewed literature should be added,

 

Science mapping method can be used,

 

Future directions and trends of researches on robotized freight should be analyzed and discussed,

 

Managerial implications should be stated,

 

Limitations of the study should be given.

 

More detailed comments:

This study aims to indicate the advances, challenges, and prospects related to 3D packing with robots. The Scopus and Web of Science databases are searched, first the initial studies that approached 3D robotic packing are identified, then a branching of manuscripts is performed using a breadth pruning approach and finally 42 studies are examined. The authors should provide more information on the branching algorithm, they should give the stepwise elimination procedure, and they should explain this procedure using data. An illustrative Figure that represent the methodology of the study should be added.

The authors should explain how they decided 42 studies are appropriate, they should provide information on the publication years and citations of these studies. As this is a review article, I suggest the authors to consider additional research papers.

The authors should explain the motivations and contributions of the study, what are the novelties of the study compared to other reviews on the subject, what is new in this study?

Abstract part should be rewritten considering aims, novelties, methodology and design of the study.

Authors explained the existing studies but it is hard to understand, tables that summarized the explained studies will be useful, these tables should include objectives, methods, limitations and contributions of the studies.

The authors can perform a taxonomy or systematic literature review, I suggest the authors to use science mapping approach.

Conclusion and discussion parts are not appropriate, the authors should analyze future directions and trends of researches on robotized freight, also they should analyze the main findings of this research.

Managerial implications of this study should be stated.

Limitations of the study should be given.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

 Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your valuable feedback and insightful comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered your suggestions and made several revisions to address the points raised. We outline our responses to each of your comments and the corresponding changes made to the manuscript in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The required revisions are performed, the paper is appropriate to be published.