Aerial-Ground Robotic System for Warehouse Inventory

01/07/2025

Efficient logistics and inventory control are critical components of modern warehouse management and essential to supply chain performance, with growing demands for speed, accuracy, and automation. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a compelling solution, offering complementary sensing and navigation capabilities, ideal for collaborative autonomous systems. However, most existing approaches depend on external infrastructure or manual oversight, limiting scalability and robustness in dynamic warehouse environments. This thesis presents a novel, fully autonomous system for warehouse inventory tasks. A UGV performs global localization within a 2D floor plan using a scan-to-map matching method fused with an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The UAV relies on fiducial markers placed on the UGV for relative localization and to execute autonomous takeoff, following, and landing behaviors. The system's architecture integrates ArduPilot for low-level control and ROS for high-level coordination. The approach was validated in simulation using Gazebo and through extensive real-world experiments in a warehouse and warehouse-like conditions. In the experimental results, the UGV demonstrated consistent and reliable localization across all scenarios, with no failures, a notable achievement given the challenges of GPS-denied, symmetric spaces. Additionally, the UGV successfully navigated via waypoints during all the performed tests. The UAV reliably followed and landed on the UGV under realistic conditions. These outcomes mark a significant advancement in autonomous inventory systems, demonstrating a scalable, infrastructure-free solution with robust localization and strong potential for practical deployment in real warehouse environments.

Autores da comunidade :

• 

  R

  Rafaela Magalhães Chaffilla

  ist195840

Orientadores desta instituição:

• 

  M

  Meysam Basiri

  ist174728

mechanical-engineering - Engenharia Mecânica

eng - Inglês

Instituto Superior Técnico