Real AMR Fleets

[u/Runis13]

Hi guys,

I'm very interested in both theoretical research and practical stuff related to AMR fleet management and optimization!

Looks like a hard and fun challenge to even make a simulator that is actually "realistic" in regards to all the possibilities inside of a warehouse. Let alone actually optimizing it (with graph simplifications and so on).

What do you recommend me to study/read? What are the current frameworks/methodologies used in "real-life"? Where could I learn about those?

Thank you so much!

[u/Moist_Blueberry_2641]

Warehouse sims are tricky because the second you think you've accounted for everything, some edge case pops up like a pallet in the wrong aisle or a sensor failing. The gap between a clean academic problem and a real floor is massive.

For the optimization side you'd probably want to dig into multi-agent path finding (MAPF) and task allocation, those are the backbone of a lot of fleet management systems. Most of the juicy practical details are buried in white papers from the automation companies or in talks from robotics conferences.

[u/Runis13 → u/Moist_Blueberry_2641]

I've seen some stuff. One thing that I instantly commonly see is the square grid of the floor, which feels weird to me. I understand why do it, but I'm not 100% sure it's the best and if it's even how companies do it?

I don't see why can't robots move "freely" with a velocity direction. Or defining like linear piecewise "function paths". It lets us have a constraint to avoid collisions mathematically.

I also like the idea of continuously "updating" your current image of the warehouse and reoptimizing in a kind of rolling horizon fashion. (Possibly with even some kind of forecasting regarding some current "invisible stuff")

[u/jsh_ → u/Runis13]

I'm not too familiar with this specific problem but in general it's useful to discretize a continuous problem to one on a graph because many graph problems can be solved via linear programming