Engineering students at the University of Cincinnati are developing an easy-to-use system to deploy autonomous drones in warehouses to take inventory and alert workers about leaks from containers.
UC College of Engineering and Applied Science doctoral students Deepak Antony David and Luke Busse are working with Valvoline to use drones to log inventory and detect leaks that could damage entire pallets.
Instead of navigating by satellite, the indoor drones use a tool more commonly associated with geology: light detection and ranging. The drone emits pulses of laser light for obstacle avoidance within centimeters of accuracy.
But what makes the system unique is the drones are dispatched using a photorealistic model of the warehouse floor called a digital twin. Workers can explore the virtual spaces of the warehouse interior depicted in high-definition video. At the click of a mouse, they can send an autonomous drone to a particular aisle or section of the warehouse to perform tasks such as finding items or looking for damaged pallets.
The students will present their proof of concept at the Modeling, Estimation and Control Conference on Oct. 25 in Phoenix, Ariz.
"The big problem with inventory is inaccuracy," Busse said. "We found that 65% of warehouses in North America still have manual inventory. People picking products, categorizing things wrong or putting them in the wrong spot. It takes time to fix."
The autonomous drones can navigate the tight indoor confines of warehouse aisles. And they can reach the highest shelves quickly and easily.
"A drone doesn't have trouble with the third dimension," Busse said.
They refined the system in the towering high-bay lab at UC's Digital Futures. Inside a flight cage ringed with protective safety webbing, students set up a mock warehouse with pallets of empty boxes stacked in rows. Using its LIDAR, the drone captured the contours of the space for its navigation, sending a colorful real-time 3D rendering to a laptop.
On another computer, Busse pulled up a photorealistic streaming video, providing a live third-person perspective of the digital drone flying in the virtual space as the real drone flew around the actual space behind him.
"With high fidelity, it looks like a video game," Busse said.
The virtual reality system runs on the Unreal Engine software used in games such as Fortnite and Batman: Arkham City, giving it an intuitive feel, he said.
The students worked with Valvoline through UC's Industry 4.0/5.0 Institute, which partners with companies to use emerging technology to solve some of their most pressing problems.
Busse said demand for automated inventory systems is only expected to increase as retailers and industry build more warehouses. Analysts like Interact Analysis estimate that more than 4,000 new warehouses will be built in the United States in the next four years.
