An Experimental Analysis of Smart Warehouses' Order Flow in Robot Energy Consumption

• George S. Oliveira UFSC
• Jônata T. Carvalho UFSC
• Patricia D. M. Plentz UFSC

Resumo

Currently, smart warehouses tend to invest in robot fleets under the Robot-as-a-Service model, where robots are leased rather than purchased. Thus, one of the warehouse decision-makers main concerns is controlling the energy consumption of the operating fleet so as not to reduce profits and slow down the order fulfillment time. Furthermore, the use of heterogeneous robot fleets is constantly growing, which makes this decision more complex because of the robots' diversity. This work presents the experimental result on the relationship between the order flow and the fleet sizes in simulated smart warehouses and the impact that such a relationship causes on the fleet's energy consumption. Results showed that some decision-making is interesting because it does not cause an increase in energy consumption despite significantly reducing the order fulfillment time.

Palavras-chave: Energy consumption, Costs, Conferences, Education, Decision making, Robots, Mobile robots, Multi-Robot Systems, MRTA, Smart Warehouse, Intelligent Warehouse