Our new paper in the European Journal of Operational Research is now online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abstract<\/strong>: The pick-and-drive system is a novel solution for warehouse automation. It integrates two types of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Storage and supply AMRs (S-AMRs) navigate to a storage area, where they lift unit loads and transport them to a disposition area. Picking AMRs (P-AMRs) move freely within this disposition area. They carry bins and meet S-AMRs to collect items from the unit loads attached to the S-AMRs by means of robotic arms. We take an operational perspective on the pick-and-drive system and focus on the problem of determining and scheduling meeting locations and sequences of the AMRs, so that all required items are picked. This setting is interpreted as a vehicle routing problem, where the customers (S-AMRs) collaborate with the vehicles (P-AMRs). We consider two objective functions, minimizing the total distance driven by the AMRs and minimizing the sum of completion times of the P-AMRs. We translate these routing problems into a mathematical framework and provide theoretical insights by examining a specific case where the potential meeting points lie along a line. For this scenario, we present an approximation algorithm for the case of minimizing the overall distance traveled and demonstrate that minimizing the sum of completion times is strongly NP-complete. Additionally, we prove strong NP-completeness of the general case when minimizing the overall distance traveled. Leveraging the structural insights, we develop heuristics that are evaluated in a numerical study. Our results highlight the potential impact of the system in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Available<\/strong>: Golak, J., L. Nehrke, D. Kress und M. Fliedner (2026). Collaborative Routing Problems in Automated Warehouses. European Journal of Operational Research<\/em>. DOI: soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our new paper in the European Journal of Operational Research is now online. Abstract: The pick-and-drive system is a novel solution for warehouse automation. It integrates two types of autonomous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":3781,"de":3774},"pll_sync_post":{},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3783,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781\/revisions\/3783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/bp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}