Aerial Warehouse Inventory Scanning Platform (AWISP)

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has greatly affected E-commerce, with a large surge in online shopping activities. As customers continue to expect fast, reliable and low-cost shipping, the increased demand has placed pressure on warehouses and distribution centres, often requiring direct-to-customer shipping beyond their previous capacity.

Many small and medium scale warehouses across the UK operate in a labour-intensive way, where nearly all tasks are completed manually and are therefore vulnerable to human error. Combined with the increased operational and infrastructural demands introduced by Covid-19 pandemic, it can be challenging for warehouses to keep up, especially with less urgent activities, such as stock taking. One of the ongoing challenges for warehouse managers is how to keep an accurate and up-to-date inventory list and capacity analysis (with a potentially even reduced workforce due to Covid-19) to guide their operation and inform strategical business plan. Although automated stock taking solutions are available, they are often prohibitively expensive, interrupt operations to install and typically require a modern facility design. As such, they are beyond the reach of many SME's.

This project aims to provide an automated inventory management solution to the warehouse sector by developing a well-equipped aerial robotic system. This innovative system will scan the warehouse efficiently and extract inventory information accurately in an autonomous fashion without human intervention. This will not only deliver timely inventory information but will also reduce the labour cost for inventory tracking, allowing workforce to focus on other important tasks. By only requiring a single UAV and no infrastructure changes, the operating cost will be accessible to small and large businesses alike.

In this project, a prototype system will be developed and demonstrated in a small scale warehouse in the East Midlands to verify the benefits of such a system and attract potential end-users. We project the developed system will deliver at least a 50% cut of the operational cost on inventory taking comparing to a manual process. In the short term, this will help enable the growth of e-commerce in the UK without companies loosing stock to ageing or obsolescence. A more accurate inventory record in the warehouse also means a reduction of the carbon footprint in logistic sector in a long run, since unnecessary deliveries and returns can be avoided.