Route planning methods for a modular warehouse system

Abstract

In this study, procedures are presented that can be used to determine the routes of the packages transported within a modular storage system. The problem is avariant of robot motion planning problem. The structures of the procedures aredeveloped in three steps for the simultaneous movement of multiple unit-sizedpackages in a modular warehouse. The proposed heuristic methods consist ofroute planning, tagging, and main control components. In order to demonstrate thesolution performance of the methods, various experiments were conducted withdifferent data sets and the solution times and qualities of the proposed methodswere compared with previous studies. It was found that the proposed methodsprovide better solutions when taking the number of steps and solution time intoconsideration.