Design of an automated stock-taking system based on unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

Many companies make regular stock-taking to supply the products they need. Unfortunately, in most companies, this stock-taking is done in the traditional way, i.e., manual counting. This process is timeconsuming, costly, and even dangerous. In this regard, stock-taking should be automated, real-time, effective and secure. Within the scope of this study, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based automatic stock-taking system that can operate indoors is proposed. This system solves the indoor positioning problem with an ultrawideband based positioning system. In addition, it works safely in warehouse environments with the obstacle avoidance function using the laser rangefinder (LiDAR) on the UAV. While the UAV moves autonomously in the warehouse environment, the video data received by the camera is processed online and the stocktaking process is run. A prototype is designed for this proposed system and experimental studies are conducted in a stock-taking test area set up in a laboratory environment. These experimental studies show that this proposed UAV system can perform three-dimensional positioning with a maximum error level of fewer than four centimeters in the indoor environment, can work safely with the obstacle avoidance function, and finally, according to the test scenario, it successfully detects twelve different barcodes of the products to be counted and fulfills the stock-taking function.