Warehouse Robot Navigation Using Rack Counting and Visual Recognition
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Solution Overview
Problem
Inventory management in storage sites is labor-intensive and inefficient due to misplaced items occupying space, requiring manual relocation and tracking, which wastes time and resources.
Innovation Solution
A robot equipped with an image sensor and processors that navigates through a storage site by recognizing regularly shaped structures, such as racks, to identify target locations by counting rows and columns, allowing for autonomous inventory management and navigation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual inventory management is used, then personnel can locate and track items, but time and resources are wasted due to misplaced items occupying space
Solution Approach 1:
The robot autonomously navigates the storage site, identifies its location by counting passed structures, and detects misplaced items without human intervention. The system self-manages the inventory tracking task that previously required manual personnel involvement, thereby eliminating time loss while maintaining productivity.
2Extent of automation
If the robot uses image sensors to track structures for navigation, then autonomous location identification is achieved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces regularly shaped structures ( racks, shelves, bins) as intermediary reference objects in the storage environment. The robot uses image sensors to detect and count these structures as mediators to determine its location and navigate autonomously, achieving automation while managing complexity through the use of existing environmental features rather than complex internal navigation systems.
Data Source
AI summary
A robot includes an image sensor that captures the environment of a storage site. The robot visually recognizes regularly shaped structures to navigate through the storage site using various object detection and image segmentation techniques. In response to receiving a target location in the storage site, the robot moves to the target location along a path. The robot receives the images as the robot moves along the path. The robot analyzes the images captured by the image sensor to determine the current location of the robot in the path by tracking a number of regularly shaped structures in the storage site passed by the robot. The regularly shaped structures may be racks, horizontal bars of the racks, and vertical bars of the racks. The robot can identify the target location by counting the number of rows and columns that the robot has passed.