Inventory Robots: Performance Evaluation of an RFID-Based Navigation Strategy

Abstract

Inventory robots produce accurate results while reducing costs. Such robots are specialized in navigating around store/warehouse facilities while reading radiofrequency identification (RFID) tags. However, commercial stores pose a serious challenge to navigation capabilities since these scenarios are likely to be modified relatively frequently. Current solutions involve having to re-map the modified layout and redesign the robots’ routes. This means that a human operator must direct the robot through the target area, reducing the autonomy and scalability of these solutions. The main goals of this article are: first, assessing the feasibility of RFID-based exploration to enable autonomous mapping of inventory environments; and second, comparing the classical robotic navigation based on waypoints to the RFID-based navigation strategy. It will be shown that RFID-based strategies can be used to successfully build maps autonomously and obtain similar inventory accuracies when compared the current non-autonomous strategies.