Order Picking Robots With Human-in-the-Loop Fulfillment Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current inventory management and order fulfillment systems lack efficiency in human-robot collaboration for picking stock items, as they do not effectively utilize robots to assist humans in selecting and transporting items, leading to potential errors and increased operational time.
Innovation Solution
A system and method utilizing robots to assist humans in order fulfillment, where an order robot is connected to a server and inventory storage, enabling it to receive orders, assist humans in picking items, and transport them to a final destination, using information capture devices for navigation and communication with human-operated devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Extent of automation
If robots autonomously pick items without human assistance, then automation level increases, but system complexity and error handling requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service through autonomous robots that independently navigate, locate items, and complete picking tasks without continuous human intervention. The robots autonomously receive orders from the server, navigate to inventory locations, and return with items, eliminating the need for human operators to manually guide each robot through the fulfillment process.
Solution Approach 2:
The server acts as an intermediary between human operators and autonomous robots. It receives orders, dispatches appropriate robots, tracks their status, and manages the overall fulfillment process. This intermediary layer simplifies the interface between humans and autonomous systems, allowing operators to manage multiple robots through a centralized control point rather than dealing with individual robot complexities.
2Productivity
If robots operate independently without human collaboration, then operational speed increases, but accuracy and error reduction decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges the strengths of autonomous operation with human expertise by enabling collaborative picking. Robots provide automated navigation and item retrieval, while human operators provide oversight, quality verification, and handling of complex situations. This combination maintains high operational speed while ensuring accuracy through human-in-the-loop validation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where robots report their status, location, and picking progress to the server in real-time. Human operators receive this feedback and can intervene when anomalies are detected. The server also provides feedback to robots regarding order updates, item locations, and routing adjustments, creating a closed-loop system that maintains both speed and accuracy.
3Productivity
If the system uses multiple autonomous robots for each order, then fulfillment capacity increases, but device complexity and coordination requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The server is designed as a universal control platform that can manage multiple robot types and simultaneously handle multiple orders. It provides multi-functional capabilities including order reception, robot dispatch, route optimization, status tracking, and coordination of multiple robots working on different or the same orders. This universal platform scales to handle increasing fulfillment capacity without proportionally increasing coordination complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system segments fulfillment tasks into independent modules that can be assigned to different robots. Each robot operates as an independent unit with its own navigation, item location, and picking capabilities. The server divides orders into discrete tasks and assigns them to available robots, allowing parallel processing of multiple orders while maintaining simple individual robot operations. This segmentation enables scaling capacity by adding robots without requiring each robot to become more complex.
Data Source
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AI summary
A system using one or more robots to assist a human in order fulfillment includes: a server configured to receive an order comprising an order item; inventory storage operationally connected to the server, the inventory storage comprising inventory items; an order robot operationally connected to the server, the order robot configured to assist a human to pick an order item from the inventory items; and a human-operated device operably connected to one or more of the server, the inventory storage, and the order robot, the human-operated device configured to assist the human to pick the order item.