From simulation to real-world robotic mobile fulfillment systems

In a new type of automated parts-to-picker warehouse system – a Robotic Mobile Fulfillment System (RMFS) – robots are sent to transport pods (movable shelves) to human operators at stations to pick/put items from/to pods. There are many operational decision problems in such a system, and some of them are interdependent and influence each other. In order to analyze the decision problems and the relationships between them, there are two open-source simulation frameworks in the literature, Alphabet Soup and RAWSim-O. However, the steps between simulation and real-world RMFS are not clear in the literature. Therefore, this paper aims to bridge this gap. The simulator is firstly transferred as core software. The core software is connected with an open-source ERP system, called Odoo, while it is also connected with real robots and stations through an XOR-bench. The XOR-bench enables the RMFS to be integrated with several mini-robots and mobile industrial robots in (removed) experiments for the purpose of research and education.