RFID-based warehouse management system prototyping using a heterogeneous team of robots

Abstract

Robotic warehouse management is a promising field of research with a high practical applicability. Typically, warehouses are strictly organized and controlled environments with a high potential for rapid robot deployments. To provide system robustness every robotic deployment should be tested in advance using simulations. Such virtual testing environment should correspond well with a real world warehouse environment and be consistent with international and national standards. In this paper, we present a warehouse Gazebo simulation that was constructed in accordance with Government Standards of Russian Federation and international standards. We implemented a simplified Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) transmitter-receiver mechanism within the Gazebo simulator and tested it in a virtual warehouse environment using a heterogeneous team of TIAGo Base mobile robot and PX4-based UAV. Our constructed virtual warehouse environment and RFID mechanism models are open-source for academic community use.