Drone control problem in logistics centres

Abstract

A large Central European logistics center that provides warehousing, picking, distribution and forwarding services to other multinational companies looking for new innovative solutions. The company also has several large warehouses in an industrial park in Slovakia. The inventory control system currently requires serious human resources and takes a lot of time, rarely having real-time information about inventory and storage solutions. For this reason, drone application has been introduced for automatic scanning of stocks, and the pilot version is already being tested. However, two very serious problems were encountered during the tests: the first problem is that the warehouse functions as a Faraday cage, so the GPS signals do not get in, so the drone cannot be controlled via GPS position, the solution of positioning is available only by accurate and real time registration of moving. Here we must respect the length, direction and control of the spatial velocity vector. We must calculate on acceleration and deceleration of drone. There is a need for all three coordinates, because aspect of the drone's battery capacity it is important to monitor vertical and horizontal movement, furthermore, in the case of empty compartments, there is no stopping and starting therefore the passage is faster. In the case of non-empty compartments, an approximate, removable movement can occur due to the distance detection, which causes the horizontal velocity vector of the drone shelf system to be smaller than expected. Another problem is to maximize the power of the drone available for moving. This also requires optimum route planning. We are looking for solutions to these problems in this article.