Foresee and Act Ahead: Task Prediction and Pre-Scheduling Enabled Efficient Robotic Warehousing

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Autori principali: Cao, B., Liu, Z., Han, X., Zhou, S., Zhang, H., Wang, H.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Cao, B.
Liu, Z.
Han, X.
Zhou, S.
Zhang, H.
Wang, H.
author_facet Cao, B.
Liu, Z.
Han, X.
Zhou, S.
Zhang, H.
Wang, H.
contents In warehousing systems, to enhance logistical efficiency amid surging demand volumes, much focus is placed on how to reasonably allocate tasks to robots. However, the robots labor is still inevitably wasted to some extent. In response to this, we propose a pre-scheduling enhanced warehousing framework that predicts task flow and acts in advance. It consists of task flow prediction and hybrid tasks allocation. For task prediction, we notice that it is possible to provide a spatio-temporal representation of task flow, so we introduce a periodicity-decoupled mechanism tailored for the generation patterns of aggregated orders, and then further extract spatial features of task distribution with novel combination of graph structures. In hybrid tasks allocation, we consider the known tasks and predicted future tasks simultaneously and optimize the allocation dynamically. In addition, we consider factors such as predicted task uncertainty and sector-level efficiency evaluation in warehousing to realize more balanced and rational allocations. We validate our task prediction model across actual datasets derived from real factories, achieving SOTA performance. Furthermore, we implement our compelte scheduling system in a real-world robotic warehouse for months of lifelong validation, demonstrating large improvements in key metrics of warehousing, such as empty running rate, by more than 50%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_06425
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Foresee and Act Ahead: Task Prediction and Pre-Scheduling Enabled Efficient Robotic Warehousing
Cao, B.
Liu, Z.
Han, X.
Zhou, S.
Zhang, H.
Wang, H.
Robotics
Multiagent Systems
In warehousing systems, to enhance logistical efficiency amid surging demand volumes, much focus is placed on how to reasonably allocate tasks to robots. However, the robots labor is still inevitably wasted to some extent. In response to this, we propose a pre-scheduling enhanced warehousing framework that predicts task flow and acts in advance. It consists of task flow prediction and hybrid tasks allocation. For task prediction, we notice that it is possible to provide a spatio-temporal representation of task flow, so we introduce a periodicity-decoupled mechanism tailored for the generation patterns of aggregated orders, and then further extract spatial features of task distribution with novel combination of graph structures. In hybrid tasks allocation, we consider the known tasks and predicted future tasks simultaneously and optimize the allocation dynamically. In addition, we consider factors such as predicted task uncertainty and sector-level efficiency evaluation in warehousing to realize more balanced and rational allocations. We validate our task prediction model across actual datasets derived from real factories, achieving SOTA performance. Furthermore, we implement our compelte scheduling system in a real-world robotic warehouse for months of lifelong validation, demonstrating large improvements in key metrics of warehousing, such as empty running rate, by more than 50%.
title Foresee and Act Ahead: Task Prediction and Pre-Scheduling Enabled Efficient Robotic Warehousing
topic Robotics
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06425