Method and system for optimally allocating warehouse procurement tasks to distributed robotic agents

US10235642B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Tata Consultancy Services Limited · IN

Inventors

• Ajay KATTEPUR · Mumbai, IN
• Hemant Kumar Rath · Bengaluru, IN
• Anantha Simha · Bengaluru, IN
• Arijit Mukherjee · Bengaluru, IN

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 30, 2017
• Grant date: Mar 19, 2019
• Expiry date: Nov 30, 2037

Classification

• Technology area (CPC Y): Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
• CPC primary: Y02P90/60
• WIPO field: Control
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

This disclosure relates generally to autonomous devices, and more particularly to method and system to optimally allocate warehouse procurement tasks to distributed autonomous devices. The method includes obtaining, at a coordinating agent, a global task associated with the warehouse and information associated with the robotic agents. The information includes a count and status of the robotic agents. The global task is profiled to obtain a set of sub-tasks and constraints associated with the set of sub-tasks are identified. The constraints include utilization constraint and/or pricing constraints. A distributed, decentralized optimal task allocation is performed amongst the robotic agents based on constraints to obtain optimal performance of robotic agents. The distributed optimal task allocation includes performing primal or dual decomposition of the set of sub-tasks by each robotic agent and updating corresponding primal/dual variables by the coordinating agent when the optimization is performed based on utilization constraint and pricing constraints, respectively.