Comparative Study on Collision Avoidance Methods in Path Planning for Warehouse Robots Using MPC

摘要

With the development of the Electronic Commerce (EC) business, the need for automation of warehouse transport is increasing, and transport robots are being introduced in various warehouses. This study addresses the problem of generating a path for multiple robots operating in a warehouse to move from arbitrary initial positions to target positions. To optimize the efficiency of all robots’ movements without collisions in a warehouse, we propose a path generation method using Model Predictive Control (MPC). In actual operation, it is important to generate paths that take into account the uncertainty of each robot’s self-position measurement and consider safety margins so that robots do not collide with each other. In this study, we devise two methods for considering safety margins in MPC: penalty functions and constraints, and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of these methods.