Yandong Liu, Lujia Wang, Ming Liu, and Cheng-zhong Xu
Warehouse systems, labour division, fixed response threshold model, MultiBots
Labour division can improve the efficiency of warehouse systems based on the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). However, considering the number of UGVs, the vehicle’s power, the number of the remaining goods and the goods’ location, it is hard to achieve the optimal labour division. Therefore, a lot of works are inspired from biomimetics, for example, bionic robots adopt the fixed response threshold model (FRTM) for foraging. The FRTM cannot directly be applied to labour division of warehouse systems as UGV robots have the task of carrying and delivering goods to the destinations and they need to avoid collisions with others in the process. We propose a novel labour division strategy based on the FRTM to reduce the energy consumption in the warehouse system. Moreover, we design a simulation platform named MultiBots applying the multi-agent path finding method, Highways. The experimental results show that the proposed method is quite effective. It can be applied in the warehouse scenario, which can lead to the significant practical value for warehouse systems.
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