Rack Design for an Autonomous-Steerable-Vehicle Storage and Retrieval System of a Warehouse

An autonomous-steerable-vehicle storage and retrieval system is a new storage concept, in which multiple automated storage & retrieval vehicles can concurrently perform compact three-dimensional automated storage or retrieval with the help of lifters. In this paper, six regulations, two corollaries, and one algorithm are presented for the rack design of an autonomous-steerable-vehicle storage and retrieval system. The six regulations describe a framework of the rack design of the system, which avoid collision between vehicles by setting vehicles to move unidirectionally on trunk rails and to pass through rail nodes after being authorized, and avoid deadlock by restricting the trunk rail networks to "no cut edge" configuration. The two corollaries can help designers to check the liveness of the highroad traffic network of the rack. The algorithm illustrates an orientation of the trunk rail network, with which designers can test the rationality of the designed trunk rail network. At last, an example is shown to exhibit how the regulations, corollaries, and algorithm work in the design.