•We define autonomous mobile robots in intralogistics.•We explain the evolution from automated guided vehicles to autonomous mobile robots.•We identify the technological advances affecting the ...planning and control decisions.•We provide guidance and methods to plan and control autonomous mobile robots.•We identify a research agenda for planning and control of autonomous mobile robots.
Autonomous mobile robots (AMR) are currently being introduced in many intralogistics operations, like manufacturing, warehousing, cross-docks, terminals, and hospitals. Their advanced hardware and control software allow autonomous operations in dynamic environments. Compared to an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system in which a central unit takes control of scheduling, routing, and dispatching decisions for all AGVs, AMRs can communicate and negotiate independently with other resources like machines and systems and thus decentralize the decision-making process. Decentralized decision-making allows the system to react dynamically to changes in the system state and environment. These developments have influenced the traditional methods and decision-making processes for planning and control. This study identifies and classifies research related to the planning and control of AMRs in intralogistics. We provide an extended literature review that highlights how AMR technological advances affect planning and control decisions. We contribute to the literature by introducing an AMR planning and control framework to guide managers in the decision-making process, thereby supporting them to achieve optimal performance. Finally, we propose an agenda for future research within this field.
Manufacturing flexibility improves a firm’s ability to react in timely manner to customer demands and to increase production system productivity without incurring excessive costs and expending an ...excessive amount of resources. The emerging technologies in the Industry 4.0 era, such as cloud operations or industrial Artificial Intelligence, allow for new flexible production systems. We develop and test an analytical model for a throughput analysis and use it to reveal the conditions under which the autonomous mobile robots (AMR)-based flexible production networks are more advantageous as compared to the traditional production lines. Using a circular loop among workstations and inter-operational buffers, our model allows congestion to be avoided by utilizing multiple crosses and analyzing both the flow and the load/unload phases. The sensitivity analysis shows that the cost of the AMRs and the number of shifts are the key factors in improving flexibility and productivity. The outcomes of this research promote a deeper understanding of the role of AMRs in Industry 4.0-based production networks and can be utilized by production planners to determine optimal configurations and the associated performance impact of the AMR-based production networks in as compared to the traditionally balanced lines. This study supports the decision-makers in how the AMR in production systems in process industry can improve manufacturing performance in terms of productivity, flexibility, and costs.
Loop closure detection is of vital importance in the process of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), as it helps to reduce the cumulative error of the robot's estimated pose and generate a ...consistent global map. Many variations of this problem have been considered in the past and the existing methods differ in the acquisition approach of query and reference views, the choice of scene representation, and associated matching strategy. Contributions of this survey are many-fold. It provides a thorough study of existing literature on loop closure detection algorithms for visual and Lidar SLAM and discusses their insight along with their limitations. It presents a taxonomy of state-of-the-art deep learning-based loop detection algorithms with detailed comparison metrics. Also, the major challenges of conventional approaches are identified. Based on those challenges, deep learning-based methods were reviewed where the identified challenges are tackled focusing on the methods providing long-term autonomy in various conditions such as changing weather, light, seasons, viewpoint, and occlusion due to the presence of mobile objects. Furthermore, open challenges and future directions were also discussed.
This paper studies planar pursuit–evasion games in the presence of obstacles that inhibit the motions of the players. The goal is to construct the dominance regions, where a point in the plane is ...said to be dominated by one of the players if that player is able to reach the point before the opposing players, regardless of the opposing players’ actions. The key achievements of the paper are to provide the dominance regions and to show that an analysis of dominance provides a complete solution to the game. This paper also presents a study of the effects of obstacles by comparing the dominance regions in the presence and absence of obstacles. The obstacles considered include line segments and polygons as well as obstacles that have asymmetric effects on the players. As part of the discussion, a novel, multiplayer pursuit–evasion game is also presented. It features three players on two teams, and it can be used to model rescue scenarios and biological behaviors. The solution of this game cannot be determined from the previous literature, but the methods provided in this paper are used to determine dominance and solve the game.
With the advancement of the autonomous mobile robots applied to Warehouses and the creation of the Robotic Mobile Fulfillment System after the market implementation of the Kiva Robots, it is ...necessary to carry out a deeper approach of the researches carried out to this date. The objective of this survey is to provide a unified and accessible presentation of the basic concepts of a warehouse system, such as its types, layouts, systems, and methodologies already applied to improve the activities, thus going to the latest research and methodologies focused on the development of new architectures and algorithms in Robotic Mobile Fulfillment Systems (RMFS). The main contribution of this work is an attempt to present a comprehensive review of recent breakthroughs in the goods-to-person RMFS field, providing links to the most interesting and successful works from the state-of-the-art, but also to provide a presentation and summary of how a Warehouse systems works, in a way that allows future researchers to understand his taxonomies and principles of operation.
Using a designed vector field to control a mobile robot to follow a given desired path has found a range of practical applications, and it is in great need to further build a rigorous theory to guide ...its implementation. In this paper, we study the properties of a general 3D vector field for robotic path following. We stipulate and investigate assumptions that turn out to be crucial for this method, although they are rarely explicitly stated in the existing related works. We derive conditions under which the local path-following error vanishes exponentially in a sufficiently small neighborhood of the desired path, which is key to show the local input-to-state stability (local ISS) property of the path-following error dynamics. The local ISS property then justifies the control algorithm design for a fixed-wing aircraft model. Our approach is effective for any sufficiently smooth desired path in 3D, bounded or unbounded; the results are particularly relevant since unbounded desired paths have not been sufficiently discussed in the literature. Simulations are conducted to verify the theoretical results.
Autonomous mobile robots are a special class of robotic systems that can move a payload from one location to the other or perform a specific task. They allow efficient, precise, and streamlined ...workflow that makes human work less arduous. The market and research work related to these robots is increasing in anticipation of industry 5.0, where humans and machines are expected to co-exist and co-work. The future mobile robots are desired to have clean and cost-effective energy sources to have longer operation times and compliance with environmental requirements to allow application in diverse fields. The research on mechanical design, perception, navigation and control has carved out many commercially viable solutions for mobile robots. However, their widespread application is still limited due to the lack of efficient power systems for use in diverse and largely unknown/uncontrolled environments. The current power solutions incur high initial costs and require recharging or refuelling, which makes them unsuitable for unattended long-haul worktimes and cost-effective applications. These drawbacks are major hurdles in the wider applicability of terrain-based mobile robots to new domains and daily life scenarios, which are possible with the existing mechanical, perception, and control technologies. Keeping in view the need for advancement in this field and to gain a better understanding of the current state of the art and future directions, this work summarizes and reviews the energy solutions presented in the literature and used in notable commercially available terrain-based mobile robots. The provided solutions are categorized and discussed while the prospects and research gaps are also highlighted. A comparison of discussed power techniques is also provided, which can serve as a guideline for selecting a robot’s energy source according to the desired requirements.
Planning a collision-free path in the least processing time and cost within constraints is a central issue in designing an autonomous mobile robot (AMR). Nature-inspired swarm intelligence (NISI) ...metaheuristic algorithms are gaining popularity in path planning and obstacle avoidance (PPOA) problem in AMRs. An efficient PPOA algorithm’s objective encompasses the ability to read a workspace map and consequently create the shortest collision-free path for the robot to manoeuvre from start to goal in the least processing time and effort. The authors have implemented a modified NISI metaheuristic approach known as a Slime Mould Optimization Algorithm (SMOA) in this research. SMOA takes inspiration from the oscillatory nature of slime mould when it encounters prey. Its mathematical model utilizes adaptive weights to simulate an optimal path for capturing prey or food. The slime moulds produce positive and negative feedback while propagating towards food with excellent exploratory competency and exploitation propensity. For this, simulation has been carried out on MATLAB 2020a. Additionally, the performance of SMOA has been compared with other NISI metaheuristic approaches such as PSO, FA, SFLA and ABC. The results demonstrate that modified SMOA takes less time and effort to generate an optimal collision-free path as compared to other mentioned approaches.
•A mathematical model is designed to simulate slime moulds’ oscillatory nature in solving path planning and optimization problem (PPOA) for autonomous mobile robots.•Mathematical model of the modified slime mould optimization algorithm (SMOA) is detailed as per the objective function of the PPOA problem discussed in this work.•Performance of modified SMOA is examined by comparing it with other approaches such as PSO, FA, ABC and SFLA, which signify that former approach is competent to solve PPOA problem in least processing time with higher efficiency.
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