Warehouse management made easy with drones

A completely automated solution for inventory management was implemented by Limitless Mobility using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones.

The key requirement was to have an accurate map of the warehouse with details of all the aisles and rack locations, using which drones could navigate the area. For indoor referencing and to increase the positional accuracy of the drones, beacons were placed in aisles and pathways of the warehouse. These beacons created positional coordinates which proved quite helpful in the navigation.

Limitless equipped the drones with a scanner which could scan various barcode stickers like EAN and UCC. Post the data scan, the drones needed to communicate to a WMS system or custom software which can capture the location and inventory. For this process, Limitless made sure that the drones used a frequency which was different from the other equipment in the warehouse, such as, forklift terminals, handheld terminals and RFID devices using Wi-Fi.

Drones have propellers that spin at 10,000 rpm and could break when striking objects. The splinters of plastic could also damage an eye of a worker. Since both drones and humans had to work in the same environment, Limitless put in place a robust ‘anti-avoidance’ technology to avoid accidents.

Earlier, manual inventory management process with physical labor used to take 6-8 minutes/pallet. Automating the process with the help of drones brought the time down to 1-2 minutes/pallet, leading us to conclude that using drones for executing physical inventory process in the warehouse has a potential of reducing the time consumption by almost 93%. The requirement of forklifts and handheld RF readers were also minimized which helped in cutting down on the costs. In the future, the client plans to use drones to search for items and marking them once they are found.