I don't know why this is getting downvoted. years ago when we had multiple warehouses our employees would upload pictures of shelves into the cloud at the end of every shift and if a product goes missing we would look at the pictures and inventory record to find out when exactly the real quantity of items on the shelf and inventory level in the system became off. if a drone could fly thru shelves on schedule and AI could count the items that would be amazing

Does that really benefit from a drone vs a wheeled vehicle with a bunch of fixed cameras on it? I would think a gigantic planar environment is pretty much ideal for an industrial SDV; a lot of things get easier when you're no longer worried about weight— you can carry a full day's worth of batteries, not to mention having higher quality optics and safety lasers.

(disclosure: I work for OTTO Motors, which has customers in this space)

Why not both? A large, wheeled vehicle that also carries a small flying drone for the occasional inspection from above.

This is the approach I've been thinking about recently. The landing pad on the wheeled vehicle could have an inductive charger to recharge the smaller multirotor vehicle(s).

wheeled vehicle parked in the isles to take a picture of a space on top shelf would be blocking pallet jakcs and other vehicles that need to move between the isles. may be a railed solution hanging from the ceiling would be better.

Rails are a lot of infrastructure to install and maintain. People complain that sticking down magnetic tape is a pain in the butt.

Exactlly, also a drone is much more flexible in case you change your layout.

other way, you mound cameras ON pallet jacks and other vehicles

I could imagine both. In the case I mentioned the warehouse was euipped with highracks up to 13 meters if I remeber well. Also the drone flew during non-working hours, so yeah some ground based solution would work too.

I always hear people raise this point but there are better solutions than a flying robot inside of a warehouse.

Out of interest, could you name a couple? I just happened to come across a couple students that are tackling this problem via drones.

A vehicle on wheels or a track is orders of magnitude more efficient. It’s not sexy but it’s more effective than having to power a flying vehicle and control it autonomously. If you really want something more drone-like, hang it from the ceiling.

What kind of solution is best depends to 100% on thr warehouse you are looking at.

Take you standard Amazon warehouse for small articles as an example. Maximizing untilisation, meaning the ratio between space used und spa e available, in that case you end up with a never ending mixture of differwnt small articles in the same location. Without RFID chips on every article, which is as of now prohibitively expensive, the only feasible way to count the inventory is using people.

For other warehouses and articles, like white goods or other large stuff that easily identified with out touching it whether a drone, a ground vehicle or something running on rails is better suited depends on a couple of factors. If you might run into situations that require a chenged warehouse layout, which occurs much more often than you think, fixed installations add a lot to the fix costs and rwduce flexibility.

Using ground based solutions runs into issues with high warehouses, storing up to 15 meters in height is not uncommon. Again, density is the main reason for this, getting more inventory at the se number of square meters. In that case a drone is both more flexible and can cover the heights as well.

But thats theory, not sure what came out of the Fraunhofer trials covering white goods.