Inventory management has been a source of problems for firms that operate a warehouse. A typical warehouse is about 8000 square meters, and a conventional pallet racking system can be three to five stories high. Conventional inventory management practice involves a team of people who go around these pallets racking with handheld logistic devices such as laser scanners to carry out cycle counts. Cycle counts are, therefore, tedious, and climbing up and down a pallet racking system is not only time consuming, but also pose a danger to the workers. Labor costs also increase with the aging of the population. Thus, automating the counting task is the next logical idea, and it has indeed been attempted by a few companies and startups, but the results have been far from promising. The...[ Read more ]

Inventory management has been a source of problems for firms that operate a warehouse. A typical warehouse is about 8000 square meters, and a conventional pallet racking system can be three to five stories high. Conventional inventory management practice involves a team of people who go around these pallets racking with handheld logistic devices such as laser scanners to carry out cycle counts. Cycle counts are, therefore, tedious, and climbing up and down a pallet racking system is not only time consuming, but also pose a danger to the workers. Labor costs also increase with the aging of the population. Thus, automating the counting task is the next logical idea, and it has indeed been attempted by a few companies and startups, but the results have been far from promising. The main reason for failure is the instability in indoor UAV control. Indoor UAVs are cut off from signals from global positioning systems that are necessary for locating, positioning and stabilizing the vehicle, making it difficult for the onboard laser scanner to move toward objects to scan their barcodes. The solution that this thesis develops not only addresses this issue but is also capable of taking off, landing, and flying autonomously in a complex, indoor environment. With the integration of an ERP inventory management module, the system can follow a schedule and carry out an inventory cycle count autonomously, reducing labor costs as a result.