Analysis and countermeasures for efficiency decline due to increase in the number of logistics support robots

Abstract

Due to growing needs for labor-saving, a large number of logistics support robots for transportation are expected to coexist and collaborate with workers in future logistics sites. Those robots should be introduced while avoiding the decrease of transfer throughput due to interference between humans and robots or among robots. In this paper, we constructed a simulator that allows measuring the performance of multiple logistics support robots working in a collaborative environment with human workers. The simulation results showed that transport efficiency actually decreases as the number of robots increases. We then identified several factors causing the reduced performance by analysis of the results to propose countermeasures for each factor.