Collaborative UGV/UAV Path Planning for Inventory Management in Warehouses

摘要

The use of autonomous mobile robots in different applications has increased significantly over the past years, which can be executed individually or collaboratively, considering the use of Multi-Robot Systems (MRS), that presents several advantages but also raises many challenges. Specifically, when considering heterogeneous robots, it is paramount to develop techniques that respect individual restrictions and benefit the use of their different capabilities. In this paper, we consider a ground/aerial collaboration for inventory inspection in warehouse environments. The goal is to determine a set of optimized combined paths that maximize the number of shelves inspected. The problem is formulated as a dual Orienteering Problem (OP), where the budget of both vehicles is considered, and the rewards, which are related to the shelves that can be visited, are estimated by a greedy strategy. Results in simulated scenarios considering different aspects provide a thorough evaluation and validation of the methodology.