A generalized algorithm and framework for online 3-dimensional bin packing in an automated sorting center
Abstract
Online 3-dimensional bin packing problem (O3D-BPP) is getting renewed prominence due to the industrial automation brought by Industry 4.0. However, due to limited attention in the past and its challenging nature, a good approximate algorithm is in scarcity as compared to 1D or 2D problems. This paper considers real-time OD-BPP of cuboidal boxes with partial information (look-ahead) in an automated robotic sorting center. We present two rolling-horizon mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) cum-heuristic based algorithms: MPack (for bench-marking) and MPackLite (for real-time deployment). Additionally, we present a framework OPack that adapts and improves the performance of BP heuristics by utilizing information in an online setting with a look-ahead. We then perform a comparative analysis of BP heuristics (with and without OPack), MPack, and MPackLite on synthetic and industry provided data with increasing look-ahead. MPackLite and the baseline heuristics perform within bounds of robot operations and thus, can be used in real-time.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2111.01072,
title = {A generalized algorithm and framework for online 3-dimensional bin packing in an automated sorting center},
author = {Ankush Ojha and Marichi Agarwal and Aniruddha Singhal and Chayan Sarkar and Supratim Ghosh and Rajesh Sinha},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.01072},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
Accepted in The Seventh Indian Control Conference (ICC-7) 2021