Towards Automatic Inventory Checking Using an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are prime candidates for use in applications like inventory checking of large warehouses. They facilitate access to the tall racks while being agile to maneuver through the confined space of the corridors of the warehouse. They are capable of carrying the sensors needed to perform the application of warehouse inspection and are capable of sustaining flight during extended periods of time. While the environment of an industrial warehouse is well structured, it is also a challenging surrounding for visual odometry due to reflections, moving parts and light sources which might be occurring at the same time. At low altitudes, the movement of the drone is less stable because of turbulence caused by a backflow of air from the drone. The goods in the warehouse are man-placed, which might cause damage to inspection targets or create obstacles in the space. In spite of all the challenges present in this environment, the drone has to perform effortlessly its application of inventory checking. In this paper, we will focus on extending the automated process of inventory checking, presented in previous work, to the real environment of an existing warehouse and provide approaches to problems that arise from practice. We will present our approach to mission planning considering the presented challenges. The system of capturing and processing application data is introduced. The developed solution uses a UAV called AV Discovery built by Airvolute s.r.o. deployed into a real environment of an active warehouse.