Robotic forklifts for intelligent warehouses: Routing, path planning, and auto-localization

Abstract

Today, robotic systems are bridging the gaps between global economy, social needs, and logistics focusing on sustainable development solutions. Everyday new robotic applications can be found in literature and media. Some of them are basically entertainment toys. Nevertheless, the great majority of them is used inside industries, performing several tasks (painting, welding, moving materials, etc.). In a scenario of global economy growth, any sustainable solution that can reduce the product final cost is welcome. This article presents researches on robotic forklifts for intelligent warehouses developed at the Mechatronics Lab at USP-EESC in Brazil. We show three keyroutines that determine the Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) behavior: the routing algorithm (that computes the overall task execution time and the minimum global path of each AGV using a topological map of the warehouse), the local path planning algorithm (based on A* it searches for the local minimum path between two nodes of the warehouse topological map), and an auto-localization algorithm (that applies an Extended Kalman Filter -EKF -to estimate the AGVs actual positions). In order to validate the algorithms developed, several tests were carried out using the simulation software Player/Stage. The results obtained were encouraging and the router developed was able to solve traffic jams and collisions, before sending the final paths to the robots. In a near future all algorithms will be implemented using mini-robotic forklifts and a scaled environment built in our lab.

Ad Hoc Network-Based Task Allocation With Resource-Aware Cost Generation for Multirobot Systems

“…In the mission, a team of robots with limited com-munication range negotiate with each other for task allocation and autonomously execute the tasks as fast as possible, as well as occasionally refill their resources in refill stations. Examples of such application areas are planetary exploration [10], automated warehouse management [11], [12], urban hygiene management [13], and agriculture automation [14]. One of the important issues for such domains is the consideration of the robots' finite expendable resources.…”

Online kinodynamic motion planning for omnidirectional automatic guided vehicles

“…However, they often have rigid concepts, which make flexible material flow complicated. This field of research often focuses on optimal path planning and vehicle scheduling [3]. In logistics a major research topic is swarm intelligence [4], which makes a lot of sense in some application domains.…”

Scheduling of smart intra – factory material supply operations using mobile robots

“…Lapierre and Ruiz (2007) proposed a Tabu Search Algorithm for scheduling part supply activities in case study coming from the supply department of a hospital. Vivaldini et al (2010) implemented the 'intelligent' warehouses concept using routine algorithms for controlling the execution of in-plant logistics. A joint chance constrained model aiming to reduce the assembly stopping forced by components delay has been proposed by Borodin et al (2016).…”