What kind of sensors and algorithms are the mobile robots of Kiva Systems equipped with?
1 Answer
Kiva uses a multi-agent system to control its fleet of robots and movable shells. Their website provides a high-level overview of their system architecture and there's also a presentation online that goes into more detail. The A* algorithm is used for wayfinding and a heuristic algorithm decides on the order of things to pick up (travelling salesman problem) and which shelves to move where (more frequently used shelves are put nearer the packing stations to reduce travel time).
According to this paper, the whole system is implemented in Java and MySQL.
I couldn't find any direct quote about the sensors in their mobile platforms, but from the picture I'd be guessing a number of sonars and IRs
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1$\begingroup$ There is also an article that was recently published that provides some high-level descriptions and interior pictures of the bot itself. blog.bolt.io/… $\endgroup$– user286Jan 15, 2016 at 16:39