Warehouse automation by logistic robotic networks: a cyber-physical control approach
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2020 21(5):693-704
693
Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering www.jzus.zju.edu.cn; engineering.cae.cn; www.springerlink.com ISSN 2095-9184 (print); ISSN 2095-9230 (online) E-mail: [email protected]
Tutorial:
Warehouse automation by logistic robotic networks: a cyber-physical control approach∗ Kai CAI Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Osaka City University, Osaka 558-8585, Japan E-mail: [email protected] Received Apr. 7, 2020; Revision accepted Apr. 19, 2020; Crosschecked Apr. 27, 2020
Abstract: In this paper we provide a tutorial on the background of warehouse automation using robotic networks and survey relevant work in the literature. We present a new cyber-physical control method that achieves safe, deadlock-free, efficient, and adaptive behavior of multiple robots serving the goods-to-man logistic operations. A central piece of this method is the incremental supervisory control design algorithm, which is computationally scalable with respect to the number of robots. Finally, we provide a case study on 30 robots with changing conditions to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Key words: Discrete-event systems; Cyber-physical systems; Robotic networks; Warehouse automation; Logistics https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.2000156 CLC number: TP27
1 Introduction The rapid growth of e-commerce, constantly rising labor cost, and increasingly demanding expectation of customers have prompted warehouses worldwide to be equipped with newer and more advanced automation technologies. This has been manifested, over the past decade, by such emergent trends as omni-channel retailing, frequent/complex ordering, same-day shipping, and last-mile delivery. To meet the demanding goals of these trends, it is critical that warehouse automation technologies be unprecedentedly efficient, adaptive, scalable, and fault-tolerant. Among many recent warehouse automation technologies, the goods-to-man approach has received significant interest from the logistics industry. According to Westernacher Knowledge Series (2017), as of 2016 more than 10% of warehouses in the U.S. have implemented this technology. The *
Project supported by JSPS KAKENHI (No. JP16K18122) ORCID: Kai CAI, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8784-0728 c Zhejiang University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
goods-to-man technology has game-changed several key operations in warehouses, replacing traditional manual picking and transporting items from storage locations by automatic operations using self-driving robots. A landmark of this technology is the Kiva system (Wurman et al., 2008), which dispatches a large number of mobile robots to serve the logistic operations in Amazon’s distribution centers. This goods-to-man approach has drastically improved operational efficiency, reduced labor cost, mitigated errors, as well as created ergonomic working environment. Given these benefits, the trend of employing this technology is currently accelerating, as the number of robots in warehouses is pred
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